“We’ll all go to prison,” Gabe said with a look of terror, “we have to get out of here.”
“We can’t just leave her,” Jamie said. He had pulled up her panties and tights, crying while he did it. He could see she was breathing, but she was deeply unconscious, more than likely from the tequila.
“Let’s go back to our rooms and figure it out, we can call campus police and tell them we heard suspicious activity back here and they’ll find her. I have a blocked number,” Chase volunteered, despite the fog in his head. He could barely think straight and felt dizzy.
“Don’t tell them it was me,” Rick begged them, with tears streaming down his face. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“But you did,” Jamie said, almost sober for an instant.
“Get Tommy,” Chase told Gabe, as they all gathered up their things and staggered toward the tree line. They all felt sick as they pressed through it. They had lost track of time while they were drinking, and it was two hours past curfew. Chase called campus police before they reached their dorm, said he’d heard suspicious activity behind the trees and thought someone might be hurt, and hung up, as they walked quietly into their building and went silently to their rooms. No one heard them. Rick went to the bathroom and threw up, as the others retreated. None of them had ever been that drunk. Chase passed out as soon as he sat down on his bed. The room was spinning as Jamie lay on his, thinking about Vivienne and what had happened to her. He felt even sicker when he thought about it.
The campus police had already found Vivienne by then and had called for an ambulance. There was no sign of the rape. All they knew was that there was an unconscious girl on campus. They didn’t know if she was drunk, had fallen and hit her head, or been attacked by a stranger or someone on campus.
The six boys who knew what had happened, those who hadn’t passed out yet, heard the siren of the ambulance ten minutes later. They were relieved that Chase had called for help. And the boys had promised Rick not to give him up, but they were all trapped in the nightmare with him. Their lives and futures had been thrown away with a single bottle of tequila and a flask of vodka if they got caught, and an innocent girl had been the victim of Rick’s momentary insanity.
By the time the ambulance got to the hospital, all six boys were in a deep, drunken sleep, and Vivienne was still unconscious. And this was only the beginning. Their Halloween had changed all of their lives forever.
* * *
—
It was just after midnight when Adrian Stone, the resident geek, snuck back from the computer lab. He knew that everyone was busy with the haunted house that had stayed open late, and he crept into the lab sometimes. He knew how to work the lock, and he went there at night. He’d been doing it for all three years he’d been there and had never gotten caught.
He didn’t know what they’d been doing, but he had seen the six boys stumbling and running after they came out from behind the trees. He had been hiding too, and he had an eerie feeling that something was wrong and they had done something bad. It was none of his business but he was curious, and they were gone. They were all the big heroes on campus who didn’t know who he was or that he was alive anyway. He liked watching them, wishing that he was like them, and they could be friends one day, but he knew that would never happen. He wondered if they had a secret meeting place or a club of some kind, and he decided to slip through the trees and check it out before going back to his room. He saw the big trees and the clearing, and stumbled over the empty tequila bottle lying on the ground. And then he saw Vivienne, lying still in her witch costume. He knew who she was too, the most beautiful girl on campus. He approached slowly, and she looked like she was sleeping peacefully. And then he thought he knew what had happened. They had killed her. She looked dead to him. He didn’t know why they’d killed her, but they had. She was ghostly pale in the moonlight and she looked dead to him. Adrian didn’t dare touch her to see if she was breathing, but he was sure she wasn’t.
He didn’t know if he was supposed to tell someone, but it didn’t matter anyway. He was sure she was dead. She wasn’t moving, and didn’t make a sound. She was definitely dead. He saw the violin case leaning against a tree, and all of a sudden he felt a wave of terror wash over him. What if someone thought he did it? If someone had seen him the way he saw them, and later they said he had killed her. And if he told about anyone who had been there before him, they’d come back and kill him.
He backed out through the bushes from where he had come and ran as fast as he could all the way to his dorm. He was panting when he got there, snuck in through a back stairway the way he always did, and slipped into the room he shared with two other boys. They never talked to him anyway and went to sleep early every night. They never knew when Adrian slipped out or when he came back.
Adrian climbed into bed with all his clothes on, shaking. By morning someone would find the dead girl, and whatever happened, he wasn’t going to say a word. If he did, he was sure he’d get blamed and probably go to prison. He heard the ambulance siren five minutes later, and was glad he’d left as fast as he did, or they would have caught him at the scene and blamed him. He was sorry she was dead, but he didn’t want to go to prison for it.
* * *
—
The campus police called Nicole Smith right after they found Vivienne behind the tree line. Nicole was asleep, but woke up and answered quickly.
“We have an unconscious girl on the grounds. She’s alive, she has no ID on her. It looks like it could be alcohol.” They told Nicole where she was and that they had called for an ambulance. “There was an empty tequila bottle on the ground under the tree.” Nicole felt a shiver run down her spine. Alcohol and kids could be a lethal combination, and at some point had been a problem at every school where she’d worked.
“Oh my God. I’ll be there in two minutes.” She leapt out of bed, stepped into shoes, put a coat on over her pajamas, grabbed her bag and phone, and took off at a dead run across the campus. She was breathless when she got there, right after they put Vivienne in the ambulance. Nicole recognized her immediately. Nicole climbed into the ambulance with her.
They sped to the hospital with sirens shrieking. The paramedics said Vivienne was alive. They suspected alcohol poisoning. Nicole was sure that everyone on campus must have wondered what had happened when they heard the siren, what teacher had a heart attack, or student had a burst appendix. She still had no idea what had happened or who was involved. The campus police said there was no sign of violence. She was just lying there unconscious, fully dressed, and they thought it unlikely she’d been drinking alone. And for now, all Nicole wanted was for Vivienne to survive. Kids died of alcohol poisoning. It wasn’t unheard of. They’d figure out later who else had been there, and left her passed out.