Part 6.

Circe and I walked to the Lotus Blossom, an off-campus Thai joint popular with alumni and grad students. Great staff, tasty food, reasonable prices, and loads quieter than the places targeting undergrads. After learning that she was vegetarian, I followed suit eating healthy. Why not? I like veggies, though for me they're a side-dish. Still, when in Rome... and Circe was cool AF.

She peered over her menu. "No need to eat vegetarian on my account."

"No worries. Veggies taste good, they're good for you, and I don't eat enough. Besides, they're good for my girlish figure," I said, realizing the instant the joke left my lips that my spanking-new birthing hips made the joke less hilarious than Joe Piscopo' silly ass Super Bowl Budweiser ad was back in the day.

We shared a lettuce wrap appetizer, and then I ordered this kick-ass vegetarian red curry that all-but turned me into a fire-breathing dragon. Thank God for iced tea.

She giggled, dabbing tom yum soup from the sides of her mouth with a napkin, her pupils dilating. "Holy shit is this good. Most fun I've had with my clothes on for a while."

I chortled, tea going up my nose as I tried not to spit.

After lunch, we sipped iced tea and talked for a long time. Well, mostly she listened as I prattled on about how upset I was with my fraternity brothers. "Not so much Squee, though he's a fucking rapist. More the guys who knew he was slipping girls mickeys but remained quiet. Or were naïve, who saw but didn't 'see,' like me. I mean, I should have known...."

She leaned forward. "Are you saying it's your fault?"

My voice hitched and my insides lurched like I was walking and stepped on my shoelaces, tripping myself up. "I — well, not exactly,... but at least kinda."

"But you just followed him to his room."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Pretty much."

She nodded, her face at once relaxed and intense, her left ear tilted towards me. "And he slipped you GBH and then five guys raped you?"

I gulped, nodding.

"That's your fault, how?"

I grew silent, my confused thoughts tumbling over themselves.

#

We walked towards campus, me squinting against the sun in silence.

The world around me seemed hyperreal: cars, people shopping, riding bikes, jogging, and all that boring real-world crap. But that normalcy seemed off-kilter. With my information floating through cyberspace, I felt as if someone would recognize me, call me out, unleashing a mob with pitchforks, leaving me exposed, pinned and wriggling on a specimen board.

Weird head-space, like a Salvador Dali painting or some shit.

I suppose it was Circe forcing me back in on myself, to dig deep instead of skimming the surface as I'd been doing. Sure, I still wanted to put my boot on Squee's throat, but I was for the first time facing the pain, the betrayal, the guilt I'd shoved down my gullet, which gave me the headache from hell. And yet, despite my uneasiness, Circe had carved out a safe slice of space for me. I dug her for that.

Girl's got game.

It took a couple of blocks, but before we hit campus, my head cleared, the sun and breeze performing their magic. And I grinned at the scene on the Quad, a grassy open-air square of sidewalks, grass, and trees crawling with undergrads.

Campus seemed quaint, almost alien though I'd lived this way until three years ago. Just three years. Hard to fathom. It seemed a lifetime.

Nerds hustling, pale as corpses, with their books to the libraries. Dozen of other, more social students hanging out, listening to music on their phones, playing Frisbee, or tossing a football. The smoking shorties in yoga pants, and the not-so-smoking ones who should NEVER wear yoga pants. And then came the petitions, the earnest undergrads saving the whales in Tibet or whatnot. Kids, full of boundless optimism and often misguided idealism.

A young dude with a full beard and tie-dye handed me a Bernie Sanders brochure, and I accepted it, nodding my thank you. The kid told me to vote Bernie. Because of the Green New Deal, and something about paying off my student loans.

I smiled because tie-dye seemed decent. And super young. Though Bernie was a socialist whom I'd NEVER vote for, but I didn't want to be a dick to tie-dye, so I nodded and moved on.