I nodded but didn’t say anything. Rebekah’s features sobered as she studied me. She was a pretty woman in her mid-thirties with short, dark hair and brown eyes, and she was about my height. If I were ever to go out into public with both my mom and stepmom—God forbid that ever really happen—people would be more likely to think Rebekah was my biological mother. Which was apropos, really. Rebekah had been more of a mother to me than Jennifer ever could be.

“Come down again soon, please? We like seeing you.”

I nodded again, my eyes stinging with fresh tears. Rebekah moved forward and—a little awkwardly, because she usually wasn’t the hugging type—put her arms around me.

“We care about you, April. I don’t know what’s going on with you and your dad and I’m going to respect your privacy, but…just remember you’ve got family here, okay? We love you.”

I pressed my hand to Rebekah’s back and returned the hug, grateful for her care and concern—and especially her willingness to respect my privacy. “Thank you. Thanks for everything. I know I don’t say that much. But thanks.”

Dad walked me out and put my bag in the car for me. As I bent to slide into the driver’s seat, he stopped me with a hand on my arm. “April…I just want you to know that I do love you and I do care. I’m sorry I’ve done a poor job of showing you before this.”

“You did the best job you could,” I said, clearing my throat. “Just like I did the best job I could. But it wasn’t good enough.”

“Then we have to do better.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

Slowly, as if fearing I’d pull away, he bent and kissed my cheek. “I’m going to be up in Orange County again next week. I want us to spend some time together if you can fit me in.”

“I appear to have a lot of free time,” I whispered, remembering his words to Adam, insisting he terminate me from the company. It didn’t matter. After that utter humiliation, I wouldn’t go back of my own free will anyway.

I got in the car and drove the two hours home, all the while thinking about this new shift in my relationship with my dad—and even Rebekah. And though the day had been completely mortifying, I couldn’t help but think about the radical change in me. I’d stood up for myself—to Adam and to my dad. And to Jordan. And though I’d royally fucked things up, I was also proud of myself. I felt strong.

But I also felt empty. I’d checked my phone before I started the car—no texts or calls from Jordan. What had I expected? I forced myself not to think about him all the way home.

More often than not, I failed.

It was just before Sid’s bedtime when I arrived at our condo. She was dressed in her flannel pajamas while playing Dragon Epoch on her computer. Just the glimpse of the game’s graphics on her screen was enough to make me feel nauseous. I walked into our room, tossed my bags down and flopped onto my bed. I was tempted to just roll over and go to sleep like that.

Sid turned around and looked at me. “You look awful.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks. It’s been a crap day, to put it mildly.”

She frowned. “I, um, heard. Or saw, rather. I was waiting to hear from you. I would have texted, but…I wasn’t sure what state you were in.”

My lids closed over sore, aching eyes. Of course she’d heard—her and half the universe. I hadn’t even checked since this afternoon to see how the story had undoubtedly grown and mutated across the Internet. I was bloody chum in the dark, shark-infested waters of social media.

“So, uh, I pieced together what happened based on tweets and updates. Does this mean you aren’t going to business school?”

I chewed on my bottom lip, covering my face with my hands. I didn’t have an answer for that.

She shifted in her chair, which squeaked loudly. “I’m not sure if this is the right time to bring it up, but…I figured out how the video got uploaded.”

I turned to her. “How?”

“Well, all this time I’d been trying to scour the Internet for the earliest known source of the video. But that was a crazy way to go about it, because when something like that goes viral so fast, it’s almost impossible. It was all over Tumblr and Reddit and 4Chan and Facebook and—”

I held up my hand to cut off her dizzying litany. “All right. All right, I get it.”

“Anyway, I didn’t realize that I could go to the source and trace it from the weapon itself!”

“Huh?”

“Your phone, Apes. I logged into the cloud backup of your phone, since you gave me the password. And it allowed me to see everything you did with that phone from the moment you made the video to the next day when you emailed said video to this address.” She snatched a sticky note off her desk and handed it to me. On it was a cryptic email address to a generic, free email provider.