Hope didn’t tell anyone right away, and the longer she waited, the more impossible it was. It would have been so much simpler if he had been a stranger in a dark alley, or if he’d slipped something into her drink. But she knew him. People would say she had been attracted to him, and they would be right. She had deliberately left the party with him, had let him into her room. She hadn’t screamed for help.

Soon it was too late. If it really wasn’t consensual, she imagined people saying, then how come you didn’t go straight to the police?

She couldn’t even tell her boyfriend, Peter. She was afraid he would think she had cheated on him. It kind of felt like she had, the moment she had taken Shannon’s business card.

Later, Peter sent a text to tell her the relationship wasn’t working out. He said it felt like they had drifted apart.

Hope decided to do nothing. And that was what she did. She stayed in her dorm with the door locked, skipping classes, eating almost nothing. She looked at the words in her textbooks without really reading them. When her teachers eventually called her, she told them she was sick, and she sounded so zombified that most of them actually believed her. Over and over again, she asked herself what sort of pathetic person just lets this happen and does nothing. Over and over again, the answer was: Me. I did that.

And then he sent her a video.

It came from an unknown phone number. She wouldn’t have opened it at all except for the thumbnail, which clearly showed her face in profile, eyes squeezed shut.

Feeling sick, she opened it. There she was, facedown on the mattress, her jeans tangled around her ankles. She was making encouraging noises. Shannon had been filming with a phone. The most disturbing part wasn’t even watching Shannon violate her. It was seeing things literally from his perspective. She looked so willing.

She wrote back, Who the fuck is this? Desperately hoping that it was Shannon. The idea that he might have sent this to someone else was horrifying.

He didn’t answer the question. Instead he wrote: Be nice. We had such a good time.

Her fingers trembled as she typed. What do you want?

His response: I want you to talk to your dad.

•

Hope doesn’t cry as she tells me this story. She’s probably cried enough. Every experience is less potent each time you relive it. Like Adderall—less kick the more you use it.

Her story doesn’t move me much, for the same reason. I’ve watched people die, sometimes by my own hand. I’ve chewed their insides. Nothing shocks me now.