Totally Tormented by Lucy Covington

her know that I was studying, but told her to have fun and that I’d see her later.
    And I was still there, sitting cross-legged on my bed studying, when she came into the room a few hours later.
    “Early night?” I asked.
    She didn’t answer me. Instead, she walked over to her desk and set her purse down, then pulled her hair tie out of her hair and shook out her ponytail. Then she kicked her shoes off.
    And that’s when I realized she’d been crying. Mascara streaked her face, and the dark circles that had been there this morning were more pronounced.
    “Oh, no,” I said, tossing my books to the side. “Rachel, what’s wrong?”
    She shook her head and then really began to sob, her shoulders shaking. I jumped off my bed and ran over to her, enveloping her in hug. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay.” I kept repeating it as I stroked her hair and let her cry.
    Finally, she calmed down enough that I was able to lead her over to her desk chair and sit her down. I handed her a tissue, and she wiped her eyes.
    “Thanks,” she sniffed.
    “You’re welcome.” I pulled my own desk chair over to her so that we were sitting facing each other. “You want to talk about it?”
    She hesitated, then wiped at her eyes again. “I’m embarrassed.”
    “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s okay.”
    “It’s not.”
    “I’m sure we can figure it out.”
    “We can’t.” She shook her head. “I’ve already tried to think about how I can fix it, and I can’t. They’re going to do whatever they want, and I can’t stop them.”
    I shook my head. “I’m lost.”
    She took in a wobbly breath. “I did something really stupid,” she said softly.
    “And now I’m going to pay for it.”
    “Start at the beginning.”
    “Okay.” She took in another deep breath, and I gave her a reassuring smile.
    “Well, you know how I spent the weekend at BU, right?”
    I nodded.
    “Well, my friend Alexa and I …we met these guys.”
    “Okay…”
    “We hung out with them all weekend. They were nice, you know? We partied and drank and just…they were cool.”
    “Okay,” I said cautiously. My antennae were up. Partying, drinking, all of this seemed like it was going somewhere bad.
    “And then one night, we were at their house. Um, they lived in a frat house, and they started messing around, you know, taking pictures. One of the guys, Henry, had just gotten this really nice digital camera, and he wanted to try it out.”
    A sick feeling was rising in my stomach. I had an inkling where this was going.
    “Anyway, they got me and Alexa to start posing together. And then we were drinking more, and then Alexa… she passed out in the other room. But I kept... I mean, they kept taking pictures of me.”
    She reached out and squeezed my hand so tight that I was afraid she might break it. But I didn’t dare move – I could tell this was hard for her, and I didn’t want to risk that she’d stopped talking.
    “And then all of them went to sleep, and it was just me and Henry, and he kept telling me how beautiful I was. And I’d had so much to drink, and so … when he told me to take off my shirt, I did it.” She looked at me, shame in her eyes. “Now you think I’m a slut.”
    “I absolutely do not,” I said. “I think that guy is an asshole for taking advantage of you.”
    “So now he has topless pictures of me,” she said. “They all do. And at first I was a little sketched out, but then he asked me to come over tonight, and so I just figured he wanted to see me again. I thought I could ask him to delete them, you know? And maybe he would.” She started to cry again. “But I was stupid, Lindsay. He didn’t really want to see me. He wanted to blackmail me.”
    “Blackmail you?” I shook my head. “For what?”
    “He told me if I didn’t do stuff with them… with all of them, then he was going to put the pictures of me online.”
    “Are you kidding me?” I said. “What a bunch of assholes!”
    She nodded.