Chapter 9 Ex Number Two #2
He quickly looks to the group, who seem content with the raging fire of their debate, attention fully diverted. “Well, um…Would it be all right if you and I chat before you go home? Just, when the others have gone, I mean.”
It’s not what I’d been expecting. “Why? I mean, of course…. Just, like…I hope you’re okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. It’s just…just better said in private. Actually, maybe if we—”
“Oh fuck.”
It’s Rebecca’s voice. My eyes dart across the table to where she sits staring at her phone.
“This is so fucked-up. What the fuck?” she continues.
Our friends on either side of her are staring down at her phone.
Chris, a sandy-haired dude who spends as much time with the surf club as he does with us, is grinning.
Laura, on the other side of Rebecca, looks horrified.
Rebecca smacks a hand over her mouth and looks up at me.
She suddenly clocks Chris’s gleeful expression and gives him a hard thump on the arm, slamming the phone face down.
Perhaps it’s my naivety that doesn’t make the answer to what’s happening immediately clear.
“What’s going on?” I ask, just as Chris’s phone buzzes. “What is that?” I ask again. “Show me.”
“Nat, babe, I’m so sorry,” Rebecca says. “There’s this video going round. It says it’s you. It looks like you.”
Idiot that I am, I’m still confused. I’m not so stupid that I don’t understand the implication; I know what it means when a video of a girl is said to be doing the rounds.
But it’s not possible. It’s too early for the thought of a deepfake to even cross my mind, but the fact of the matter is I’ve not recorded myself in any kind of compromising position with anyone.
I don’t even send Luca nudes—I’m too worried about this exact kind of thing happening.
“Show me,” I say.
“Nat,” Harry begins, “maybe here’s not the right place to—”
“Show me,” I insist.
I’m half expecting that it’s just going to be some other Black girl—it won’t be the first time I’ve been confused for another girl on campus—but the video is worse than I could have imagined.
First, it’s unmistakably me. Second, although there’s little to see bar his groin, it’s obvious to me that the other person in the video with me, the person recording, is Luca.
We’re in his room, on his bed, and it’s his hand traveling across my back, grabbing at my waist and my neck intermittently as he thrusts into me.
Luckily, you can’t really see my face as I’m on my knees and forearms. But if you know me, know my head of fine braids, it’s clear who I am.
It’s enough. I pause the video and switch the screen off, placing the phone down gently.
As I wrestle with the swell of looming dread, I count it a small mercy that the sound was off.
And then, as if life wanted to have the last laugh, I suddenly hear my voice and Luca’s voice, panting and cursing.
The things he’s saying to me felt sexy and daring and hot at the time, but now they feel degrading, shameful.
For a moment, I go from being the girl who sees everything to seeing nothing, totally numb.
I want to climb into myself and live there, in the dark.
I think perhaps I already have. It’s not until I feel the cold beer pooling in my lap, hear the deafening crash of the glasses, that I snap to and leap up.
Chris is sprawled across the pub table, nose streaming blood.
His phone is smashed on the ground by my feet.
Harry is being dragged out by security, and I’m under the impression that Emily must have been part of the skirmish, because she’s getting marched out, too.
Rebecca is running after them, pleading Harry’s case.
A couple of the girls are asking me questions in soothing tones.
I can barely hear what they’re saying. My sister is beside me.
Her little hand is in mine. Well, it’s not so little anymore, but it still sort of feels it, you know?
And her little hand is an angry claw. Her anger is filling the space where mine should be.
“Did you know?” she’s asking, and her voice is the only one I can hear. “Did you know he was filming you?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Then that’s—that’s against the law, right? We should do something. Something real. I can’t smash every phone on campus.”
“I mean, it was impressively swift damage, but she’s right,” Laura says. And of course, she’s here, too. “We have to do something. This is so awful, I’m so sorry.”
The pity emanating from the faces around me is so thick I’m suffocating. It’s too stuffy in here, and I can’t breathe. I need…I need…
“Thank you, sorry.” My words aren’t making sense. “I need some fresh air.”
I stagger outside, where the air is cooler. It helps and it doesn’t. I can’t organize my thoughts, and suddenly the swell of dread and shame is cresting. It breaks over me and I’m drowning. I’m drowning and I don’t know which way to swim up. And so I let myself sink.
My sister is beside me and I don’t know when she got there, and I’m on the ground, and my phone is in my hand, calling Luca’s number.
“Natty,” Claire says, “you’ve got to breathe.”
And she’s right. I’m panicking, gasping and gulping, chest heaving.
She takes the phone from my hand—five consecutive calls to Luca with no answer—and places an arm around my shoulders.
With great effort I close my eyes and try to see a way out of the hole I’m in.
There’s a sliver of light within me, of hope, but it’s nestled in an ugly place.
I snake my fingers toward that light and grip it tightly, ignoring the dark, oily sheen that covers it.
And as my fingers take hold, I feel my despair and my shame and my dread sink into a leaden ball, and I feel that leaden ball sharpen into something white-hot.
Something sharp enough to cut someone with.