“In what sense?” I take a swig of beer.
“You’re game for anything—you don’t take life too seriously, that kinda thing.”
My life is serious to me. It matters. I’m sitting in a cage of buffoons, acting like one because I can’t fathom Scott existing for unquantifiable time in my world. I’m giving him thirty more minutes, and then he’s gone.
“Sounds like me,” I say with a smile into my next swig.
Scott enters the living room with a remote in hand. “Is Simon still shitting?” he asks.
Trent’s best friend has been puking in the bathroom since I arrived. “He snorted too much coke before the plane ride,” Trent says. “I told him you had extra, but he was convinced he’d spend two days without it.”
“Idiot.” Scott plops down on the square, modern chair. He switches the television to an input that connects his computer to the TV screen. “Pick a number one through seven.”
“Me or Connor?” Trent asks.
“Either or.” He scrolls through a video playlist labeled with only single-digit numbers, and I watch his cursor light up each one in temptation.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
And he starts at the beginning again, waiting for us to choose. I look to Trent, and he hardly seems perplexed by the videos. I assume he’s watched some, if not all, before.
So I say, “You pick.”
Trent squints at the numbers. “…I can’t remember the video where he tells her to strip.”
“She’s naked in four through seven,” Scott answers, the cursor lighting up these numbers.
4
5
6
7
I stretch my arm over the couch but clutch my phone tighter. I have an idea what this is now, and I have to make an unsuspicious excuse to leave quickly. I touch my lips with my phone in mock contemplation. “Do you two always do this in your free time?” I ask with a blasé smile.
I hoped their illegal activities would start and end with drugs. The answer that hammers my brain has rippling consequences, and if I misstep even once, this will blow up in my face.
“Dude, when you see what Scott has, you’ll wish he showed you sooner,” Trent tells me. “It doesn’t beat the real thing though.” He laughs and pats my shoulder while he drinks his beer, verifying that he actually fucked whoever is on these tapes.
Scott mutters, “Lucky bastard.”
Daisy.
I’m ninety-nine percent certain. I was only twenty percent at Saturn Bridges when Scott brought her up in the context of oral sex, and I was seventy percent sure the minute he brought up the numbered videos. But now I know.
Daisy is on one through seven. There are so many reasons why I would never watch them. Why I can’t. Why it makes me physically ill to even picture Scott, Trent, and whoever else repeatedly viewing these.
5
6
“That one,” Trent says.
I act like my phone buzzes. “Shit,” I curse, scrolling through an old text and springing to my feet.
“What?” Scott stops the cursor on number six.
“Jane fell off her fucking highchair.” I rake my hand through my hair, appearing distressed. “I’ll be right back—you can start without me.”
“She’s probably fine,” Scott says. “You don’t want to miss this.” He clicks into the video.
“How long is it?” I wonder.
“This one is a half hour,” Scott says, waving the remote at me to come back and join them. I waver, to act like I really want to watch. My muscles pull taut, flexing as I force myself to linger in fake curiosity.
The basement of a townhouse blinks on screen, a timestamp in the bottom right corner, affirming the date of when Princesses of Philly aired. The camera overlooks the small room with a bed and a wooden dresser. Daisy’s ex-boyfriend sits on the edge while she’s already half-undressed and begins to shimmy her panties down her legs.
Don’t look.
It’s too late.
My pulse jackhammers, nausea rising to my throat, and I check my phone again, acting like Rose keeps texting.
Scott said he destroyed the footage of Daisy, but clearly he kept some of what he filmed during Princesses of Philly. Like the rest of us, she had no idea cameras were in the bedrooms. So she undressed and she hooked up with her then-boyfriend without fear of being recorded.
Daisy was only seventeen at the time.
“Take it off, baby,” Trent laughs and looks to me. “She sucks him off at fifteen minutes.”
I try to appear what he wants me to be—excited but dejected that I have to go home and miss it. I glance at my phone and groan. “Shit.”
“What?” Scott asks.
“Rose thinks Jane hurt her arm. I’ll be right back.” With this, I sprint out of the door, able to run without them questioning my motives.
As I race down the driveway, the facts hit me all at once—facts that I researched after Saturn Bridges, to reaffirm what I already knew.
Pennsylvania state law prohibits the photographing, filming, and videotaping of a sexual act involving a child under the age of 18.
I run faster across the street.
Pennsylvania law punishes the voluntary viewing or possession of child pornography within an individual’s home.
I am so close to joining him in breaking the law, but it’s not why I sprint, why when I reach the mailbox I increase my stride.
There’s only a small window of opportunity to fuck Scott over. I can’t chance waiting another hour or another day. This is it.
When I enter the house, I bolt up the stairs, not even paying attention to Lo, Garrison, and Ryke in the living room. “Connor?!” Lo calls, worry in his tone.
I confidently head down the hallway, listening to a group of voices…in my room. I turn sharply and open the door to find the girls huddled around the vanity with Willow. In seconds I deduce that she agreed to go to prom with her friend, and Rose, Lily, and Daisy have been helping her get ready.
All four heads whip towards me in unison.
“I need you and you,” I order, pointing to Daisy and then Rose. I gesture for them to go to the bathroom.
“What’s going on?” Lily asks, confused as to why I’d leave her out.
“Connor?” Rose stands and approaches me while Daisy hesitantly heads into the bathroom.
I clutch the back of Rose’s head and whisper quickly in her ear, explaining everything in a few sentences. I feel her entire body constrict and coil against mine.
“What the fuck is going on?” Ryke asks in the doorway, following me upstairs with Loren in tow. I hold out my hand, telling him to stay back for a second.
“He wants to talk to Daisy,” Lily explains.
When I finish filling Rose in, she looks horrified for a single second before she layers on an enraged, hostile expression, venom pouring through her yellow-green eyes.
“We’ll be five minutes,” Rose says, taking my hand and following me into the bathroom.
“Cobalt!” Ryke shouts.
Rose shuts the bathroom door on him, and then Daisy hops up on the sink counter and swings her feet. “What’s up, guys?”
I stand side-by-side with Rose, hand-in-hand, prepared to drop a grenade on a girl who has suffered through too many already. I usually always have the right words, but it’s hard to express the weight of what I’m about to unleash—and what it means to her life.
Rose is quiet as well. How do you tell a young girl that she’s been violated? I remember how I bought and destroyed pictures of her backstage undressing—from a photographer—to avoid this for Daisy, and with strange circularity, she’s about to experience a version of that anyway.