"Do you have any idea what a girl's reputation means to her? Are you trying to destroy her?"
Tears welled up in May Cox's eyes.
"Nelly, if this is what it takes for you to feel better, then I won't say a word. You're my best friend, after all."
Her yielding, her sweet reasonableness, only poured fuel on the fire.
Godfrey knocked the flowers off the table with one punch, stepped on them, and ground them under his heel again and again.
"Cornelia, your cruelty terrifies me."
"Everyone has to answer for what they do. I hope you don't come to regret yours."
I lowered my eyes, my fingertips trembling faintly.
The unfairness of it sat lodged in my chest, neither rising nor settling, until I couldn't breathe.
Soon enough I understood what Godfrey had meant by those parting words.
Godfrey posted on the campus forum under his real name, saying May was his actual girlfriend, that there was no such thing as a mistress or a homewrecker.
He said all his care for me had only ever been the care a boyfriend shows his girlfriend's best friend.
When a classmate posted a photo of us together and pressed him about it, he replied that I'd used my paraplegia to play the victim and hounded him without letting go.
Someone screenshotted the whole thing off the campus forum and spread it across the internet.
Every big creator on the video apps rode the story for views.
My information was dug up in no time.
They flooded my social media accounts with insults and bombarded my phone number without stopping.
"You crippled bitch, seducing your best friend's boyfriend—doesn't it make your skin crawl?"
"No wonder you broke your legs. Even heaven knows you're rotten and wanted to punish you!"
"How does a school even admit someone so morally bankrupt? Just wait to get expelled!"
Then some worked-up stranger tracked down which hospital I was in.
He slipped into my room under cover of night and climbed onto my bed, meaning to do something to me.
A nurse doing her rounds stopped him.
It only spiraled bigger.
Then came the message from my academic advisor, urging me to drop out.
The unfairness and the collapse surged up all at once, and a sharp pain stabbed through my head.
The machine beside me broke into rapid beeping.
Breathing turned hard, the figures in front of me spinning into a blur.
The doctor rushed in.
"Someone, in here!"
"Get the sedative, now!"
Just as the sedative was wearing off, a memory I'd forgotten came flooding back.
My fall from the cliff had never been an accident.
Those hands, that face, came into focus in this very moment.
With a shaking hand, I dialed the police.
"Hello, someone's trying to kill me…"
