What if they think I did this to her? Fucking shit! What was I thinking?

I wasn’t thinking. And now I need to get her out of here before those guys come back. I tuck the gun into the back of my jeans and run to her. Her face is a swollen bloody mess and they must have brutally raped her; there’s blood all over her legs and all the way up to her exposed breasts. I place my fingers on her neck to feel for a pulse and it’s there, though very faint. Scooping her up in my arms, I’m immediately struck by the metallic scent of her blood mixed with what must be the acrid tang of their sweat. I want to vomit, but I grit my teeth and carry her to the car.

Her breath comes in soft, shallow gurgles that make me want to go back and kick the shit out of that guy even though he’s dead. How can anyone do this to another human being?

There’s a little blackness inside all of us.

No, I think to myself as I adjust my hold on her to stop the lolling of her head. This is not a little blackness. This is an all-engulfing black hole in the fabric of humanity.

I consider laying her down in the backseat, but I’m afraid she’ll start choking on her blood or stop breathing and I won’t see it until it’s too late. I lay the passenger seat as far back as it will go and lay her down on her side so she’ll be facing me as I drive. Her entire backside is smeared with fresh and old blood. How long have they had her? Part of me doesn’t want to know the answer to this question, but another part of me knows it will probably make me feel even more justified in my actions tonight.

As I drive toward Good Samaritan hospital, I’m tempted to speed through all the lights, but getting myself arrested is only going to delay her care. Eight minutes later, I’m just a few blocks away from the hospital when I realize that . . . this girl saved my life. I don’t believe in fate, but I don’t know what else could have put her there at that exact moment. The idea makes me both sick and grateful. If they’d gotten there just a few minutes later, both of us would probably be dead.

I reach inside my coat to grab my phone and pull out a small, mint-green book instead. I tuck the book back into my pocket, then I pull out my phone and look up the number for the emergency room on my phone. Pulling up about twenty yards beyond the emergency-room entrance, I pull my hood over my head and hop out of the car. I race around the back of the car, thankful that there’s no one outside the emergency room to see me. I wrench open the passenger door and easily scoop her up. She can’t be more than fourteen or fifteen. Her skin is stretched taut over her bones and now that she’s lost so much blood, she wispy as an angel in my arms.

That’s what she is: an angel. A broken, bloody angel. I want nothing more than to stay here with her to make sure she’s okay. To thank her . . . for existing. But I can’t.

I enter the emergency room through the sliding doors and gently lay her down on a waiting bench near the entrance. The harsh fluorescent lights illuminate her bloody body, and that’s when I see the bunny tattoo on her chest. I make a split-second decision to lay my only copy of Black Box on the bench next to her head, then I race out the emergency-room doors to my car.

Chapter 16: MIKKI – January 3rd

Just hearing the words April fourteenth makes me want to vomit again. ‘Who are you?’ I scream, covering my eyes with the sheet so I can’t see his face.

‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ His voice is getting closer.

‘Stay away!’ I shriek as memories of my humiliation flash in my mind. ‘Don’t touch me!’

‘You don’t understand. I’m not one of them.’ His voice is soft and reassuring and it makes me sick.

‘Get out!’ I want to threaten to call the cops, but I can’t.

I’m trapped in this fucking hotel room with one of the few people in this world I can say took my soul from me. My body trembles as my mind flashes to our conversation in the club; how he joked around about killing me. I wonder if he recognized me the moment I walked into that airport terminal and I just played right into his hands.

This is not how I want to die. I want to die on my own terms. I can’t let him take that away from me. I have to do it before he does.

I pull the sheet away from my face and I can’t stop the tears once I see the hardness in his gaze and the way his chest muscles bulge beneath his shirt. ‘Please don’t hurt me again,’ I plead, sick with myself for once again being so weak. ‘Please just let me go.’

His jaw clenches as he stares at me. ‘You think I’d do something like that to you.’ I don’t know if he looks more angry or hurt. ‘I’m not one of those pieces of shit who did this to you. I’m the one who found you. I’m the one who took you to the hospital.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I’m not!’ he shouts and I squeeze my eyes shut against the memory of the bottom of a sneaker coming down on my face. ‘I’m not one of them,’ he says, a bit gentler this time. ‘I swear to fucking God, I’m not one of them.’

‘You want me to trust you.’ I sob into the blanket. ‘I’m not falling for that.’

‘I can prove it. I left something with you, when I dropped you off at the hospital. A book.’

The trembling stops completely as I think of the book I’ve been carrying with me for more than three years. There’s only one person in this entire world who knows about that book other than me and my sister Meaghan. I pull the blanket away from my face and peer under the sheet at my chest where the tiny tattoo over my heart stares back at me. Is this what gave me away?

‘Black Box,’ I whisper, staring at the bunny tattoo; my old Twitter profile picture.

‘It’s me,’ he responds, and I don’t have to look at him to hear the relief in his voice. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

‘Why?’ I pull the covers below my chin so I can see his face.

He shakes his head as tears well up in his eyes. ‘I don’t know. I guess I wanted to know that you were okay.’

‘Why?’

His gaze pierces into me, as if I should know the answer to this question. And I do know.

He moves toward the bed slowly and, when I don’t flinch, he takes a seat on the edge of the bed and buries his face in his hands. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

‘For not staying with you.’

‘You didn’t have to stay with me. I was in a fucking hospital. Trust me, I was being taken of.’

I wipe the tears from my face as I think of the first shower I took in the hospital bathroom. There’s only so much the nurses could wipe away with a sponge bath. The dried blood came loose from every crevice of my body. No matter how hard I scrubbed, more just kept coming, from my hair, my fingernails, my mouth.

‘Can you please leave?’ I ask, wiping the last tears on the sheet, almost expecting to find blood smeared on the white fabric. He doesn’t look at me. He just gets up and silently heads for the bedroom door. ‘Just – just wait outside the door, please.’

He looks over his shoulder and nods before he closes the door behind him. I throw the covers off me then scramble into the bathroom to get dressed. Then I head back to the bedroom to dig the book out of my luggage. I lift the flap of my gray messenger bag then I unzip the interior compartment. Digging my hand inside, I come up with the soft, mint-green book. As always, the bloody fingerprint stains along the top edge of the cloth cover make my stomach twist.

I sink to the floor and clutch the book to my chest as the memory closes in on me.

I try to open my eyes, but my left eye is covered with something and my right eye seems to be fused shut. I whimper as my eyelashes are painfully pulled apart by the frantic struggle of my fluttering eyelid.

‘Ow,’ I mewl desperately.

The pain in my eyelashes is nothing compared to the pain in my mouth and my . . . The memory of the attack starts coming back to me and, through the cotton stuffed inside my cheek and bottom lip, my cries become less like weak whimpers and more like desperate moans.

‘Help,’ I groan thickly.

A nurse walks in and her eyes are wide with concern. I must look like shit for someone who’s seen as much trauma as she’s seen.

‘Are you in pain, sweetie?’ she asks, checking the monitors around me, pressing buttons that mean something to her, but to me they’re just bleating reminders of my fragility; my humiliation.

‘Yes,’ I mutter through the cotton and the knot in my throat. ‘It hurts.’

‘Where does it hurt?’ Her hand clutches the side rail of my hospital bed as she peers down at me with her wide brown eyes.

‘Everywhere.’

She nods her head solemnly as she repeats this in a whisper. ‘Everywhere.’

She can’t hold back any longer. She wipes a tear from her eye as she reaches for the bag of clear fluid hanging from the IV stand. I think it’s just a cover, because the bag is almost full.

She turns back to me and sniffs loudly. ‘I’m sorry, honey. Your parents will be here soon. Did you want some pain medicine now? It might make you too sleepy to visit with them.’

‘They’re not here yet?’

The corner of her mouth screws up as she tries to hold back her tears again. ‘You didn’t come in with any identification. It took a while to find them. But they’re on their way.’

‘Ow . . . I need medicine, please.’ I don’t want to feel this pain. This feeling that I’ve been hollowed out with a dull knife. ‘Please.’

She pushes some buttons on one of the machines and a soft pumping sound startles me. It reminds me of the sound of the van as it squeaked up and down beneath me. My fingers tremble as I squeeze the bed sheet in my fist. But my grip slackens quickly as the drugs kick in and soon I drift off into blissful blackness.

When I come to again, my mom is standing next to me, her green eyes bloodshot from crying and her light-brown hair frazzled, as she was woken in the middle of the night and probably didn’t bother combing it. She reaches for my hand and I yank my hand back. This sends a sharp pain through my shoulder and I cry out.

‘Ow! Don’t touch me.’

My mom reaches for a button on my bed, probably to call a nurse, as the soft sound of Meaghan’s cries come to me from somewhere near my feet. I lift my head a little, ignoring the pain in the side of my neck so I can see her. The collar of her T-shirt is pulled up over her face so that it covers her up to her eyes. She’s trying to hide her tears from me, but she can’t hide the way her shoulders jump with each sob.

I lay my head back on the pillow and close my eyes, then I immediately open them again when I see the Red Sox cap. ‘What time is it?’

‘Seven a.m.’ My father’s voice comes to me, ragged and reserved, from somewhere near the door of the hospital room.

Seven a.m. I left the party around eleven o’clock. I’m almost afraid to ask, but I have to know.

‘How long have I been here?’ I ask just as a different nurse enters the room.

‘Since two a.m.,’ she replies while reaching for something behind me to turn off the nurse call. ‘You were in surgery for an hour, then you were sedated for a while. Are you hurting?’

‘In surgery?’

My mom covers her mouth as she turns around and steps out of the way for the nurse to check my IV lines. ‘Nothing too serious. The doctor will talk to you about it tomorrow after you’ve had some rest.’ The nurse leans in, pretending to adjust my pillow as she whispers, ‘I have your book if you want me to bring it to you. I figured I’d let you decide if you want to keep it or let the cops take it.’

I almost ask her what the fuck she’s talking about, but my heart starts racing with the prospect of possibly finding some kind of clue as to who did this to me.

‘I want it now, please,’ I whisper as she’s pulling away.