So, Claudia wasn’t thinking about Jeremy or Chad when she walked into Down Under with Lolly and Adrienne last Friday night. The three of them had shared a joint before treating themselves to the tasting menu—plus wine pairings—at a new SoHo restaurant. They giggled and pranced north into the Village, and when they passed the revelers spilling out of the bar Lolly announced that the irony of starting the evening at a Michelin-starred restaurant and ending it at a notorious dive was too perfect to ignore. To the extent that she could think straight at all, Claudia was thinking about Ben, and what he’d called her. She was thinking about all the strangers online who’d seen the stupid TV show and were calling her the same thing. She was thinking that everybody makes mistakes when they’re eighteen and wasn’t it just her shit luck that hers got captured for the whole world to see. But she wasn’t going to let Ben or a crappy reality show ruin her life. She was in the greatest city in the world and she was on spring break.

Had Chad and Jeremy known each other before that night? Did she try to fight? Was that how she’d gotten hurt? Or was hitting her in the face part of the fun? And who was going to believe her when she said she’d been wronged? Please. She was a drunk rich girl. There was probably video of her leaving the bar with both of them. She’d probably been laughing.

After leaving Trevor in the pastor’s apartment, Claudia paced the paths in the park for what felt like hours. What was going to happen next? Near the new playground, she saw a group of kids from her dorm and quickly turned away, scrambling to shove her earbuds in so she could pretend not to hear if someone called her name. She didn’t want to leave the park until she had a plan. But as evening turned to night, as the moms pushing strollers were replaced with people dragging shopping carts, she became more and more agitated. All around her men were looking at women, talking to women, touching women. What had those men done the night before? What didn’t those women know about them? She wanted to grab every girl she saw: Don’t trust him, she’d warn. It’s getting dark and you can’t possibly know what he is, what he’s done, what he’ll do. She saw herself running and screaming through the park, pushing people apart, interrupting picnics and photo sessions below the arch. Someone would get a picture of her and sell it to the Post. “CLAUDIA CASTRO GOES CRAZY!”

At the corner of the park and West Fourth, someone touched her shoulder. She looked up, and there was Daphne Daniels, from her art history section. And beside her, Jeremy.