in a cold tone of voice.
“No, ma’am,” Stefan said getting up, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Obviously not.”
After he left, I crumpled up the flier and tossed it at the nearest wastepaper bask et, but missed. I immediately went back to studying statistics and probability, but before I left I picked up the ball of paper and put it inside my backpack. Maybe dropping in wouldn’t be so bad and would help Operation Get Your Shit Back Together. Who knows?
***
The meeting was pretty cool.
There were ten of us in total, and I was a little surprised to discover that four of the people who showed up were guys. Somehow, I just hadn’t been expecting to see guys. I didn’t think guys could be sexually assaulted.
It was students only and we sat around in a horseshoe in the darkened student cafeteria and just talked about nothing in particular at first. Finally, though, this one tiny Asian girl named June piped up and talked about the night her boyfriend wouldn’t stop feeling her up and what happened afterward. Everyone told June it wasn’t her fault and she was awesome for being so brave.
A tall, handsome black guy named Miles went next, talking about what had happened between him and his uncle when he was twelve years old. The stories after that were scary, and sad, but somehow cathartic. The students who talked looked relieved after telling their secrets, like they were dropping this huge weight off their shoulders. It was like it stopped being scary after they got it out, like we were all sharing each other’s burdens.
A kind of anticipation started bubbling up inside me, and when it came my turn to say something, I was a little surprised by how much detail I offered. “I never saw him again. I hope I never see him again, but I’m afraid one day I might, and if I did, I won’t know how to react,” I admitted, staring down at my feet.
A red-haired girl name Christa nodded and said, “You’re not the only one, Iz. Clark did the same thing to me.”
I swallowed hard, like a walnut was stuck in my throat. “You mean Clark is a…like a serial…”
I didn’t want to use the word, but Christa nodded again and said, “A serial rapist? Yeah. I know at least three girls on campus he’s done it to.”
I caught a sob in my throat. “Why doesn’t anyone say anything? Turn him in? Do something?”
She looked at me sadly , with darkened eyes. “You didn’t turn him in, did you?”
I thought about her words as I got into bed that night. For once I didn’t cry myself to sleep. I was too damned mad to cry.
***
I pushed the Dyson Ball back and forth across the living room floor, leaving tracks in the plush crème-colored carpeting, while Dr. Dorian sat in a wing chair in a corner of the room and quietly made notations in his small, leather-bound notebook. He made not a sound, but I could feel his eyes on me as I slowly worked my way across the vast plane of carpeting. I worked hard at ignoring him and tried to concentrate on the task at hand and not go too fast. The work was surprisingly easy.
In the past week, I’d learned that the Michaels brothers were almost pathologically neat. There were never any stains on the carpeting, messes on the coffee tables, or even many dishes in the sink of their vast, industrial kitchen. Their bedrooms were absolutely spotless. I think they spent more of their times in the offices, consultation rooms, and attached clinic than anywhere else. They seemed to eat out more than they did in. When I arrived at work in the late afternoons, right after classes, it normally took me about ten or fifteen minutes to assess the damage from the night before, and usually only an hour or two to neaten up.
Dr. Damian told me I was responsible for answering the door, seeing patients to consultation rooms, and cleaning the whole bottom floor of the mansion—everything except the offices, consultation rooms and clinic. Those had a professional industrial waste cleaner who came in once