“Yep.”
“Wow. Danni’s crazy hot. And just plain crazy.”
“No shit. She fucked four other guys at the party, too.”
“Before or after she got to you?”
“I’d rather not talk about that.”
“So before.”
“I said I’d rather not discuss it.”
Dr. Rajanece Austin poked her head from the small room that served as her office in the Campus Counseling Services for the first time that day, having taken no breaks between sessions except for a fifteen minute pause to eat lunch while responding to emails. Her watch said that it was 2:57 in the afternoon. That meant she had three minutes before she had to meet with her next appointment, no doubt the rather pitiful yet conspicuously attractive young woman with the occupying the office chair next to her.
Dr. Austin avoided eye contact deliberately and notified the department secretary that she was stepping out, then had to quickly add she’d be right back. She hustled up to the roof and, with tremulous hands, lit a cigarette.
She’d given up smoking almost thirty years ago, and it had been incredibly difficult. These past six weeks, however, she’d started up again. She had to do something to take the edge off, that constant, overwhelming melancholy brought on by the recent surge in her case load.
Rape and sexual assault were a fact of life on college campuses. Usually, in a given school year, she had around two to four rape and sexual assault survivors. Twice—ever—she’d had male survivors. A few years, she’d had no such cases at all—they’d come through her office, surely, but the cases had been assigned to her colleagues. In her worst year, she’d had nine total cases.
Since fall break, she had averaged one and a half such new cases. Per week. Her case load, which had been full already, now had her working 60+ hour weeks to give each case its due diligence.
Bizarrely, there was a pattern to them—sex crimes by strangers were incredibly rare, but most of these women said they didn’t even recognize the perpetrator. Stranger still, those who described the incident all had similar tales of being violated while consenting. None of them had reported it to the police, and all were emphatic that they would never do such a thing. Dr. Austin neither discouraged nor encouraged it—that was their decision—but increasingly, she realized the pattern.
The incidents often occurred in public. They often had pictures or video taken. The woman was made to feel guilty for resenting the attention. A woman—an accomplice, perhaps?—was with the violator, sometimes taking part, always spurring him on.
Finally, one client—a freshman named Rachael—had given her a name. Well, the initials, but still, with that and the knowledge that he was a student, Dr. Austin’s access to student records could in time allow her to find him. How many DJ’s could be enrolled here?
Still, Dr. Austin had ironclad oaths—and laws—which prohibited her from disclosing any information to the police. Only in the case of an imminent threat to someone could she disclose any information—or if a client authorized her to. Rachael would not. She was near to retirement anyways; could it be worth it to lose her job to confront this DJ herself?
She ground out her cigarette and headed back downstairs, addressing the young woman in the waiting room. “I’m Dr. Rajanece Austin,” she said pleasantly. “You can call me Nece, if you like.”
“Dr. Melissa Restrepo,” said the patient, shaking her hand. “You can call me Missy.”
Brittney Jenner finished recording another entry in her feelings journal—the digital one—and saved the file. She tried to write in it every day even if she didn’t have much of anything to say. Still, DJ had wanted her to, and someday, it might help with what she needed to do, what that nagging voice in her head was always pushing her to do. (It wasn’t a literal voice, but the instinct was so loud it may as well have been.)
She hoped the journals would help. Her feelings were beyond confusing lately.
That done, it was time to start the day. Mercedes was still sawing logs after coming home wasted—she’d gone bar-hopping after the massage night program and came home totally hammered—so Brittney quietly slipped into her robe and grabbed her shower caddy, then off she went.
It was Thursday, which had for a brief time meant it was her turn on the rotation—to shower with DJ, that is. Ashley stepped in whenever she felt like it, but otherwise, he had one girl or another in to bathe him every day. By now, he’d probably forgotten how to clean himself.
It was one of the things Brittney had genuinely enjoyed with him. She knew many of the other girls didn’t (of course, none truly minded, certainly not enough to complain or beg off), but she actually liked it. For one, she just really liked being in the shower—the dorm had great water pressure and an endless free supply of hot water. For two, she just enjoyed it. It was a lot of soft touching, and she always thought boys looked better wet and naked than dry. She knew she did.
Still, ever since Ashley came into his life, she’d seen precious little of him. Plenty in passing (they lived less than a hundred feet away from one another after all) but seldom in any prolonged duration. At that nagging voice’s prompting, she made excuses to cross his path when she could—heading to the drinking fountain when she heard his creaky door moving, getting lunch in the cafeteria at the same time, and so on.
It wasn’t easy, though. Ashley watched her prize like a hawk.
In the month and a half since fall break, she’d become certain of Ashley’s agenda. It was pretty obvious, really—suck him in with her body, ham up her enthusiasm, be “the perfect girlfriend” by letting him enjoy unlimited access to other women—or nearly unlimited, with limitations imposed only by her. Then, emotionally manipulate him to keep everyone else who he might care about at a distance.
Brittney recognized it easily. After all, it was nearly the same thing men had been doing to her since she’d hit puberty. From the outside, it was hard to see how anyone would let it happen to them, but she’d been there. She understood.
Ashley was rubbing in her victory, too (if it could be called that). Mercedes was one of her favorite targets for a third wheel in their sex play (or fourth wheel, if that girl Emily was around). She’d walk right in, snap her fingers or say something bitchy to command Mercedes’ presence, then smirk at Brittney as her roommate shuffled out.
Brittney didn’t even get why, really. She hadn’t been courting DJ. She certainly didn’t want to benefit from his power—the opposite, in fact. Maybe they could have developed into something, or she might have had some success in prying his attention away from some innocent girls, but she was pretty sure Ashley thought they were after the same goal.
Let her.
The warm water began to wash the stress off Brittney’s body; she closed her eyes, put her hands on the wall to brace herself, and turned off her mind. She was doing a wonderful job of blocking all thoughts of DJ and Ashley and strange powers and bizarre experiences and desire and anger and longing and dread—right up until she heard DJ’s voice outside her stall.
She kept her head down by instinct, as they were easily tall enough that he would otherwise identify her by the top of her face. She saw two pairs of feet under the divider between the stalls; one were obviously DJ’s, and between the voice and the dusky tint of the skin on those feet, it had to be Tara.
Brittney just left the water running and listened. She ought to just turn the water off and go, avoid running afoul of Ashley and the train wreck that confrontation would likely be. Instead, she compromised by beginning a quick cleaning, applying her shampoo to her hair as her ears strained to catch every little sound from her neighbors.