He crosses his arms at his chest in response to my question.
“Fine,” I say. I pull my phone out and find the first image. I hold it up to his face. He glares at me, then tries to swipe it. I dodge his hands. “Look with your eyes,” I say. My voice is hard.
He looks then, and I see it in the way his face changes. He’s confused and then outraged and then confused again. “What the fuck?”
I shrug and pull the phone toward me. It’s a photo of Tanner leaning over Sophie, but it could be any drunk girl, really. He’s grinning. And holding a knife to her throat.
I scroll to the next image and show him.
This time he grabs my hands and phone together and pulls them toward his face. “That is not me,” he says.
“Looks like you,” I say. Here’s what I don’t say: I don’t say that it’s not him. Not really. I created this photo using a simple illusion spell. These photos are not real, but I needed evidence that showed how disgusting he is because people don’t always believe drunk girls who claim they were assaulted. The real pictures of Sophie had no trace of Tanner—he was smart to keep himself out of them—but these versions do. These versions, that a simple illusion spell helped me create, definitely do.
He stares harder at the phone, and I know he’s wondering what the little green pills are that sit like candy in his palm in the picture. “It’s fucking photoshopped.”
I yank my hand free of his and glance at the image. The spell workis impeccable. “That’s pretty good Photoshop,” I say, going back to the first picture. “The scar on your chin is exactly the same.”
“But I never… How did you get those?”
I give him a look that I hope conveys I would never reveal my source. Then I shrug again, waiting for him to understand.
“Wait, why are you showing me these? What do you want?”
Satisfaction thumps inside me, like a heartbeat. “Leave Sophie alone,” I say darkly.
“Sophie Stringer?” He looks baleful, like he’s hardly ever thought of Sophie, like he barely knows who she is. It enrages me.
“Don’t speak to her. Don’t message her. Don’t even look at her ever again or I swear to god, I’ll show these pictures to the police.”
He hesitates. “That’s not even me.”
I suppress a twitch of the lip because I can hear desperation in his voice, even doubt. He doesn’t think he’s ever held a knife to a girl’s throat before or slipped Rohypnol into a girl’s drink, but he’s not entirely sure, maybe because he was too drunk to remember clearly. It seems like something he would do, doesn’t it?
He protests again, but this time there isn’t any real feeling behind it, and I know I have him. I zip the phone into my bag and take a step back. “I have worse too, you know. I can make your life a living hell. So stay away from Sophie. Stay away from any girl that doesn’t give you her consent, you fucking creep.”
His eyes betray him before he makes his move. He lunges toward me, hand outstretched, and he tries to grab the bag from my back. I am far enough away that I avoid him, but then his other hand finds my hair. He tugs, hard, and my head whips painfully to the side. I reach behind me, into the pouch of my backpack, fumbling with a canister. One of his hands is still ensnared in my hair and the other is roving, searching blindly for the zipper. Then, he has it. He starts topull the zipper open, and panic flutters in my chest, but then I have hold of the canister. I clutch it in my palm and point it toward his face. I can tell he doesn’t see the pepper spray until it’s too late. I press down with one finger.
He lets out a cry like an animal.
I stumble backward. Then, I run.
39Sophie
Sixth and Pine.
That’s where Marissa told Sophie she lives now. She walks by several houses before she sees a cardboard box next to a trash bin with a picture of a crib. She approaches the front door, painted a garish red, and knocks. She cried all the way to her dad’s and made herself a sandwich to try to calm her breathing. She hates herself for what she said to Elena and Joey. She didn’t really mean any of it, did she? Eventually she pulled out her phone just to see Talia’s name, just to see something that would ground her. But all she saw there on the screen was the black-and-white picture of an ultrasound scan. Marissa’s ultrasound scan.
Nothing happens for a minute, and Sophie wonders if Marissa is still out, but then, just as she’s about to turn away, the door clicks open.
“Sophie.” Marissa wears wool socks and her hair is pulled back severely.
“We must have mixed up phones,” Sophie says. She can’t summon her usual friendliness.
Marissa smiles. “All good. Come on in.”
It is, honestly, the last thing Sophie wants to do. She just wants to goback to her dad’s, pack up, and maybe even head home. But she needs her phone, so she just says, “Sure.”
The inside of Marissa’s house is sterile. White walls and bright lights jar against the mountain view out the windows. A pair of black police-issued boots sits by the door next to a pair of men’s running shoes.
