“Relax, Mary,” he says, his breath warm in my ear. “You’re safe.”
I hear the party thumping on the other side of the wall. I think about Kent, about how he’d smash through the door and murder this guy, about how he’d call me an idiot for letting it get this far. The thought gives me a jolt of adrenaline.
I shove, as hard as I can, aiming for his chest. My hand lands right in the center of his sternum, but he doesn’t budge — just laughs and catches my wrist again, twisting it so my arm bends behind my back.
“Don’t be like that,” he whispers, and his breath is in my hair now. “There’s no need to fight, although it does turn me on.”
My free hand claws at his shoulder, trying to peel him off, but he’s stronger, heavier, locked in. I feel the wall at my back, the doorknob digging into my hip, and for a second I think I can pivot, wriggle free. I try, but he just spins me, his body pinning mine, his hand sliding down my waist to the curve of my ass.
The fear is electric now, shorting out all the logic in my head. “Let go,” I spit, and the words come out ragged.
He grins, presses his body against mine, and whispers, “I just want you to have a good time. What kind of host would I be if you don’t enjoy yourself?”
His hand slides under the hem of my skirt, his palm hot on my thigh. He leans in to kiss me again, tongue pushing past my lips, and I taste blood — my own, from where I bit down earlier. I jerk my head to the side, hit his chin with my cheekbone, and he hisses, more annoyed than hurt.
There’s a pounding sound outside — footsteps, maybe, or just the subwoofer maxing out. In that instant, he lets up, just a fraction, but it’s enough.
I twist, digging my heel into the top of his foot, and pull free. I stumble backward, crash into the edge of the dresser, the bottles rattling. My hand scrabbles for the doorknob.
He grabs at my arm again, but I swing my purse at his face, connect with a thud. He lets go, surprised, and I throw myself at the door, wrench it open.
The hallway is a flood of light and bodies, the noise from the party slamming back in like a tidal wave. I run, boots pounding the floor, but to my horror, Clay gives chase. I’m running one moment, and then the next, he’s tackled me and I’m knocked to the floor.
“Oof!” I shriek. “Ouch!”
The hulking boy drags me to my feet before grabbing my wrist and hauling me down the hall once more, back to his bedroom.
“I told you I have a really cool aquarium,” he pants, red-faced and angry. “Why don’t you want to see it?”
“No, no! I don’t care about fish! I don’t care about hermit crabs! Let me go!” I squeal. But my protests only cause Clay to pull harder, forcing me back into his bedroom. His movements are so abrupt that I literally bump my head against the door as he tries to push me inside, making me see stars. I wobble on my feet, knees shaky, and then suddenly, everything goes black.
14
THE RESCUE
KENT
Ipark half a block away, engine off, the Mercedes idling on residual heat as if the car’s nervous, too. I can see the Sigma Epsilon Chi house from here—a three-story Victorian, every inch of it warping under the weight of its own bad choices. There’s a crowd on the lawn, the familiar vector of kids queued up like sheep at slaughter, IDs in hand, some too drunk to stand straight. The porch sags under the weight of the party, a single light over the door flickering between yellow and straight-up funereal. I see Mary Kate’s blonde head, bouncing in the half-dark, her white tee almost radioactive, skirt the color of a cherry popsicle, legs impossibly long above the boots. She’s with another girl I don’t know, and she’s laughing, her breath leaving ghosts in the cold. I watch her disappear into the house, the front door swallowing her whole.
I have no business being here. I’m a forty-five-year-old man, a doctor with a career, a house, a life. But I’m also a failure, because it’s been an hour since my stepdaughter left the mansion and I’ve spent twenty minutes of that hour sitting in my own driveway, hand locked on the wheel of my car, telling myself to be a fucking adult and let her go. I lost that argument.Now here I am, staked out like a PI, waiting for some idiot frat boy to make a mistake with my girl. Self-disgust rolls through me, a churn of shame and arousal and the sour terror of a man who knows exactly what can happen at a party like this. I grip the wheel until my knuckles flash bone-white. It feels appropriate.
I get out, coat on, and walk the block, each step a stone in my gut. The cold cuts through my shirt. I like the feel of it, the slice of air, the little reminders that I’m alive. Up close, the house is worse: paint sheared off in long strips, porch rail rotted out at the base, piles of Solo cups and cigarette butts in the shrubbery. The windows are pulsing with music, bass so dense it rattles the glass in its frame. Overhead, the trees are bare, branches like fingers scratching at the sky.
The line outside is a clot of undergrads, mostly dudes with backwards baseball caps and acne, most of the girls in skirts so short their pussies are barely covered. I drift past them, head down, hands in my pockets. The kids don’t even look at me: in the dark, in the cold, nobody expects the threat to be a man in his forties with gleaming blue eyes and a surgeon’s hands. Inside the vestibule, the air hits like a backhand. Sweat, beer, a sweetness underneath that’s not quite right—something synthetic, almost medical.
A guy in a football jersey checks IDs at the threshold, but I don’t break stride. I look him dead in the eye and say, “Alumni,” and he shrugs, stepping aside with the deference of a kid who’s seen his share of alpha males and knows when he’s the company of a superior. I’m in.
The front room is bodies—dozens, maybe a hundred, the crush of heat making my scalp prickle. Strobe lights paint the walls in arterial red and white. Every surface is sticky. The music is eighties retro, louder than the city at rush hour, so thick itthrums in my teeth. The main thing is how young the kids look. They’re not even people yet, just raw matter being shaped into futures, still soft at the edges, all cartilage and potential trauma. The boys wear baseball caps, or those grown-out broccoli cuts that make them look like they’re about to cry over spilled milk. The girls are pure energy: short skirts, boobs everywhere, faces lacquered and shining, hands up in the air like they’re drowning and want to be seen.
I move through the crowd, scanning for Mary Kate. It’s a matter of training: look for the anomaly, the soft spot, the mistake. I see three girls who can barely walk, two of them being led by boys in billowing t-shirts. The boys are “helping,” but their hands are everywhere—waists, lower backs, up skirts. No one else cares. I count at least twenty empty beer cans sitting in the corner of the room. Again, no one cares.
Near the kitchen, I see the transaction happen. Guy in a Twins cap, face like a dropped pie, tips a folded square of paper over a drink, taps it with his finger, and hands it off to a girl who’s not even watching. She downs it in one go, smile never leaving her lips. I feel a surge of hate, not just for him but for the entire ecosystem that made him possible.
No sign of Mary Kate on the main floor. I try the kitchen. It’s a dead zone—empty bottles, pizza boxes, a puddle of what looks like ranch dressing crawling down the cabinet face. Two girls are making out on the counter, one of them holding a vape in each hand, the other pawing at her own chest with the desperation of someone who wants to be anywhere but here. Next to the fridge, a boy in a beanie is topping off a pitcher from a plastic handle of grain alcohol. He’s careful about it, even scientific. A future pharmacist.
I cut through a side hallway, following the current of people. There’s a bathroom door, open, a girl inside vomiting into the sink while her friend holds her hair and yells at anyone who looks in. I keep moving. My heart’s up around 130, maybe more, but my hands are steady. I tell myself I’ll find her, just to see that she’s safe, then I’ll go home and jack off and never think about this again. It’s a lie, but it works for now.
At the back of the house there’s a staircase. I take it two at a time, my shoes silent on the old wood. Upstairs is less crowded, a myriad of darkened hallways. At the very top, there’s one last hallway, and at the end, under a bare bulb, there’s a closed door with a strip of yellow leaking from underneath. I hear a chant—a deep, regular sound, male voices stacked on top of each other: “S-E-X. S-E-X.” It’s more animal than language, the kind of chanting that ends in police reports and bruises.
