Page 41 of Brutal Game

“Positive,” I said, swallowing.

Because I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure about anything, not anymore.

14

Aviva

Over the next week or so, Jack’s declaration that I was his “cumdumpster” followed me everywhere. On campus, everyone I walked by went silent, only to explode into laughter once I’d passed them. In the cafeteria, I was surrounded by guys in Kings jerseys—either members of the team or team groupies—who did the slut cough, except they’d exchanged “slut” for “cumdumpster” when they fake coughed. Tovah made the mistake of posting a picture of us on Instagram and tagging me. Her comment section exploded with people saying what a trashy slut I must be for Jack Hat Trick Feldman to announce publicly that I was nothing to him but a set of holes. And someone had the balls to graffiti the study carrel I’d rented with the delightful word on it. The library was replacing it, but who knew how long that would be?

Cumdumpster.I thought I’d hated princess because of my past, but I’d had no idea how bad it could get. I avoided talking to everyone but Tovah and my professors, called outsick from work (Dick hadn’t fought me on it), and counted down the days until the weekend. I planned to hide out in our apartment and watchTed Lasso, like I should’ve done last weekend instead of going to that godforsaken party. Luckily, Jack had disappeared. Maybe this time, hewasdone with me.

I could only hope.

Jack confused me. He’d defended me to Dick, protected me, kissed me like I mattered to him. The tenderness had fucked with my head so I’d bitten his lip, but it was like my small action had triggered something in him and brought out the cruel asshole he really was, not the protective boyfriend type he’d pretended to be for five seconds.

Tovah, for her part, was livid. She’d ranted all week about “doing a murder, just a small but painful murder,” and begged me to let her go after Jack “in any way I possibly can.” In fact, she’d written an op-ed inThe Daily Queenasking, “Do We Let Our Campus’ Hockey Gods Get Away With Too Much?” The editor-in-chief had pulled her aside and told her no way were they running the article; the Kings were their biggest advertiser.

I told her it was okay, that I was okay.

And in some ways, I was.

Under normal circumstances, the bullying would have destroyed me. And I wouldn’t pretend that being under such a malicious microscope didn’t hurt, because it did. My anxiety was through the roof, my nerves were shot, I was sleeping like shit, and there were even times I had to force myself not to burst into tears. But these weren’t normal circumstances. I had more important things to care about than my reputation at a university I’d never intended to be at in the first place.

All that mattered was proving that Joshua Jensen hadabused Asher so I could help Asher get his life and his future back.

Since hacking into Joshua’s cloud account hadn’t worked, I had to pivot to other tactics. I completely doubted that Asher was the coach’s first victim, and I couldn’t imagine no one had talked, so I spent the week diving deep into college hockey Reddits and other college sports forums, searching every version of Joshua Jensen’s name I could think of to see if there was a single whisper of misconduct.

All I found was a single, buried post:JJ’s a real dick, and only thinks with his dick.But the user,motherpucker22,had disappeared off of Reddit and deleted their account. I searched for them on every other social media site.

Nothing.

I was frustrated and desperate. This had to be a lead, so then why couldn’t I find anything? I felt like I was failing my brother—and myself.

Unfortunately, my focus on justice meant other things slipped my mind. Namely, the semester-long partner project for Deviant Psychology.

Until one day, more than a week after Cumpdumpster-gate, I was rudely reminded of said project with this text from an unknown number:

Hey, study buddy, when are we doing this thing?

My stomach dropped out of my body and through the earth. It probably landed somewhere in hell.

It had to be Jack.

doing what thing

Not even asking who this is?

the red flags that popped up on my phone made it pretty obvious

He sent back a smirking emoji. I hadn’t even know therewasa smirking emoji.

Meet me at the hockey house in an hour so we can figure out what our topic is.

Like I was an idiot. I wasn’t going near the hockey house.

meet me at M Libe

Ellipses danced across my phone’s screen, before he finally responded.

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