22
In Leah’s powder room, I lean over the sink. During a first-aid class I took years ago, I learned to apply ice or cold water to wrists and temples to bring an overheated body back to normal temperature. But it’s not helping.
I’m burning up from the inside.
A deep, familiar shame grips me.
Those memories, the ones I’ve boxed up and tucked into a corner of my brain, come shooting through my thoughts like shards of glass.
The motel’s clock radio was playing “Hanging by a Moment” so softly I could barely make out the words.
I hummed along, not daring to turn it up. I didn’t want to wake Paul.
My old Nikkormat had no timer, so I decided to try out the cable he had bought for me earlier that day at B&H Photo in midtown Manhattan. Among the walls of lenses, special papers, and obscure photography esoterica, I had withered under the somber looks of the Hasidic man helping us, sure he could see the dirtiness within me.
I connected the long, black cable to the camera and placed it on the nightstand. Then I pulled off my bra and nestled my body against Paul’s sleeping one, folding myself into a pose that was sexually wise beyond my actual experience. I wanted to matter, not simply to exist. I ached to feel special, and Paul’s intense desire had breathed life into me.
So I mimicked what I saw—in the movies, in magazines, in my home.
In the first pictures, I covered my bare breasts. Click.
The photos would cement us, would tether Paul to me. Sex was simply the seed from which our love would grow. In time, he would come to love me.
I remember thinking of my favorite TV show, Mad About You, and how everyone said I looked a little like the actress who played the wife on the show. I didn’t have blond hair, but I had the same squinty eyes that disappeared when I smiled. On the show, the couple met at a newsstand on West 81st Street, when they both wanted the last copy of the Sunday Times. While paying for it, the woman dropped a dry-cleaning ticket, which the guy used to hunt her down.
I longed for someone to desire me so much they would track me down like that.
For the next batch of photos, I positioned my arm above my head, knowing, the way all girls know, that this would make my breasts look more attractive.
In the last one, I lowered my eyelids just a little, and put one finger in my mouth.
Click.
And then, weeks later, it was posted on MySpace, and life as I knew it was ripped apart.
Daisy’s loud laugh jolts me back to the present.
I join them back in the kitchen, where Daisy and Leah are spooning heaps of chopped nuts on the long rectangles of dough.
They stop what they’re doing when I enter.
“Are you all right?” Daisy asks.
“Not really.” I hover near the counter, not sure whether I want to stay or go. But the warmth from the oven and the sweet smells from the oven are so comforting that I don’t dare move.
“Is that you?” Daisy asks.
I nod. “When I was a teenager.”
“Well, Facebook has to take it down. That’s against the rules. Putting up naked photos of teenagers, right, Leah?”
Leah shakes her head in disgust. “Totally. They have to take it down.”
I am heartened by their indignation. Leah starts typing. “I’m going to fill out the complaint form right now.”
“Who’s the guy in the picture?” Daisy asks. “Do you think he’s doing this?”
Leah stops typing, and they both turn to me expectantly. Somewhere, in the darkest corners of my imagination, I’ve always felt haunted by what happened all those years ago. I’ve carried a vague sense of doom, that I would someday pay a price. But I never expected this.
“He’s an ex-boyfriend,” I say, not ready to tell the whole truth.
A loud “Goddamn it” issues from upstairs. Leah looks up at the ceiling. “He’s got to be playing Fortnite. That’s the only thing that gets a rise out of him these days.”
Daisy reaches a hand out and touches my arm. “You were saying. An ex-boyfriend?”
“From high school. But we haven’t spoken since my senior year.”
“Do you think he could be the one doing all of this?” Leah asks.
“Maybe.” Lexi. I knew in my gut when I heard Rob use that nickname that it had something to do with Overton. But how could it all be connected?
“Did you have an ugly breakup?” I turn away from them and stare at the blackened window that looks out onto Leah’s backyard. All I can see is a muddy reflection of myself. I remember the police detective asking me if I really wanted to ruin this young man’s life. “You could say that.”
“What’s his name? Let’s track him down.”
I turn back and put on a brave smile. I do not want everyone in Eastbrook to know I slept with my teacher in high school, triggering a police investigation. I need to take care of this myself.
“Thank you, both of you, for being so supportive,” I say.
“Look,” Daisy says. “Jeff is a good guy. I’m sure he will take these posts down. I’ll reach out to him tonight.” She scribbles on the legal pad.
“As for the neighborhood gossips, screw ’em,” Leah says. “Who cares what they think!”
“And you should think about going to the police,” Daisy says, “if for no other reason than if this escalates, you’ve started a paper trail.”
I nod, but there is no way in hell I want to go back to the police station. The last time I was there, the detectives all but accused me of murder. My plan in regard to the police is to lie low until they catch who really killed Rob Avery.
They both walk me to the front.
“You’re being really sweet. Thank you.”
“I’ve been there,” Leah says. “After my first husband died, I dated this total creep.
