“Could you change the station?” I call out to the driver.

“Don’t,” Silas says, cutting me off. He doesn’t look at me, staring straight ahead. “I’d like to listen to this. Besides, you have your earbuds in, right?” His smirk makes it clear he knows they’re a ruse. He’s calling me out on my own fakery, damn it.

“Fine. Suit yourself,” I grumble, shoving the earbud back in and really turning on the music.

Except… I’m curious.

Stupid, right? Why would I marinate myself in popular culture’s interpretation of what I did or didn’t–mostly didn’t–do when it came to a senator’s daughter being gang raped by our friends?

Because I can’t help myself.

I can’t.

Just like some part of me can’t help wishing Silas would validate me. Be nice to me. Believe me.

If I could tune it all out, turn it all off, make it all go away, I would. Sometimes I envy sociopaths. Narcissists. People with character disorders who have no consciences. It must be so easy to live without an inner voice. Can you imagine? Going through life without tracking other people’s emotions. Spending time without beating yourself up, or worrying about how your actions make other people feel.

Not caring that the world thinks you’re a traitor, a betrayer, a woman who helped three men gang rape and nearly murder your friend.

Twice.

How do I turn off all these feelings that crawl along the inside of my skin like termites, eating me from the inside out?

Seriously–how? Tell me the secret.

Instead, I listen. My music volume gets lower and lower as my resolve disappears.

“Two words. Lindsay Bosworth. What comes to mind when I say her name? If you’re like most Americans, you recall the live-streaming television and video that circulated nearly five years ago, in which Senator Harwell Bosworth’s daughter was captured on camera having sex with three men. After the fact, her friends came forward to claim Ms. Bosworth’s actions were intentional and consensual, leading to an internet shaming campaign that lasted for years.”

Oh, God. I’m not sure I can listen to any of this. I glance at Silas.

His face is a mask.

“But if that’s all you know, then you’ve been living under a rock for the last six months. Because just as Senator Bosworth announced his run for the presidency, a new scandal rocked the senior senator from California, as the men in the original video turned out to be more than they seemed–much, much more.”

“Isn’t everyone?” Silas says in a cold voice. “No one is ever what they seem.”

I ignore him. I can’t ignore the gut punch his words create, but I try.

“It turns out those three friends of Lindsay Bosworth lied about the original incident, and Ms. Bosworth was drugged. The sex was never consensual, her reputation ruined for reasons that are still opaque. Thousands of hours of testimony before lawyers, Senate and House inquiries, intelligence community investigations, and still all we know is this: Lindsay Bosworth was a victim. And she was victimized twice. Once by those men, and once by her friends.”

“Friends,” Silas sputters. “Right.”

Shut up! I scream in my head.

“Then it happened again. Targeted by the very same men who brutally attacked her before, Lindsay Bosworth was the focus of a campaign to destroy her father. She was a pawn. He was the king. And a man Senator Bosworth had known for decades–Senator Nolan Corning–was aiming for checkmate. At any price.”

“How’s your old buddy Nolan, Jane?” Silas asks, finally turning and looking at me.

I point to my earbuds and give him a twisted, fake smile. “What? I can’t hear you.”

His eyebrows twitch, a strange gesture of doubt that gives me a weird electric bolt of hope. Maybe he’ll at least stop being mean to me if I pretend I’m not listening.

“Records found by intelligence agencies investigating the Bosworth matter found evidence of communications between Senator Corning and the three attackers, major league baseball player John Gainsborough, television celebrity Stellan Asgarth, and California state representative Blaine Maisri.

“In a shocking development, emails and texts between the group of men and Corning and sent through privacy channels designed to make the communications untraceable show a careful, calculated plan to harm the senator’s daughter.”

This time, Silas says nothing. I let my shoulders relax.

“The twist: all three men who assaulted Lindsay Bosworth are now dead, two killed by her security team, one at her own hand. The heroic rescue, captured on live-streaming video under bizarre circumstances involving noted pornography star Tiffany Marquis, left Gainsborough, Asgarth, and Maisri dead. Untangling the full story has taken six months. We have twenty minutes. We’ll do our best.”

Great. Hurry up, journalists. Get in as much shaming as you can. Bring out the bad guys.

And by bad guys, I don’t just mean John, Stellan, and Blaine.

I mean me.

“Central to this brutal story is the role of Jane Borokov, Lindsay Bosworth’s friend, who found her beaten and bound nearly five years ago in the first event. Lindsay’s childhood friend and daughter of Senator Bosworth’s executive assistant, Jane Borokov called 911 immediately and administered basic first aid at the time, explaining that she had left the house party by accident, intending to be there. She went back to the house to use the bathroom and discovered Ms. Bosworth alone, naked and tied up, covered in blood, with numerous broken bones. Borokov’s testimony at the time was contradicted by their mutual friends, Amanda Witherspoon, Jenna Marquez, and Tara Holdstrom, who claimed that Ms. Bosworth had asked for drugs and had told them that she wanted to experience having sex with all three men.”

And then.

And then Tara’s voice, breathy and panicked, fills the SUV.

“I never meant to lie! I swear! We were threatened that if we didn’t lie and tell everyone that Lindsay got high on her own, that if we didn’t tell the police that Lindsay set it all up and wanted a gang ba–um, an orgy, then we’d be ruined.”

Even Silas winces, pinching the bridge of his nose in an expression of pain.

“That was Tara Holdstrom, in sworn testimony before a House inquiry committee. As the story unfolded, security teams and private investigators, prosecutors, and FBI officials all interviewed the six surviving people at the heart of the matter–Lindsay Bosworth, Andrew Foster, Jane Borokov, Amanda Witherspoon, Jenna Marquez, and Tara Holdstrom–to piece together a comprehensive whole. The bottom line: we now know the original story to be a lie.”

I’ve been holding my breath without realizing it. With that last line, I exhale. Silas turns and looks at me. I see him out of the corner of my eye, but don’t look back.

“Lots of stories told back then were lies,” he says smoothly. “Especially yours.”

“I’m the only one telling the truth,” I mutter, unable to keep up the pretense. “Aside from Lindsay.”

“Or you’re the only one capable of continuing to manipulate people for longer than most people could endure.”

“You tell me, Silas. You’re a military intelligence specialist. Am I really lying? Are you sure?” My voice goes up, turning bitter, like overripe fruit about to drop, long past the point of remaining attached.

For a brief second, a flicker of authentic emotion comes into those blue eyes, dark now, the color of stormy skies over a giant lake in August, so blue, they’re almost gunpowder grey. Maybe I’m deluding myself, but I swear what I see is uncertainty, a crack in the armor of his anger that comes from assuming I’m as bad as the media says I am.

And, unless I’m seriously and truly inventing my own little world, I am pretty sure I saw a spark of desire in there, too, setting my skin ablaze. It can’t be. I’m so desperate for any validation that I’m human that I’ve reached a point where I am inventing this.

I’m sick.

I’m sick in the head.

Sick in the heart, too.

“I know what you did.”

“You know what people want you to think.”

“And you’re one of those people, Jane. You’re trying to manipulate me. The difference between you and them is that they’re not backstabbing little–”

The radio crackles, the next words cutting through our argument:

“...the three assailants went on to become stars in their respective fields, high flyers who rose up the ranks a little too quickly to call it merit. A major league baseball player. A television acting star. A state rep on his way to a national Senate seat before the age of thirty. It was too good to be true.

“Because it was.”

“Lindsay Bosworth spent four years in a private ‘meditation retreat’ known more for its medical mental health services than for its yoga and spa treatments, slut-shamed and portrayed as a woman who asked for it.”

“They got it wrong with Lindsay, and they got it wrong with me,” I snap.

“When Harwell Bosworth, the senior senator from California, decided to announce his candidacy for president of the United States, Lindsay Bosworth re-emerged into public view. Present at his announcement in Sacramento, her head of security was none other than Andrew Foster, her ex-boyfriend who sat by and did nothing during the attack four years earlier. No one knew that the faceless man in the video was him–or, at least, the media didn’t know.”

Silas makes a little noise, almost an acknowledgment of Drew’s suffering. Even without the guy here, Silas shows compassion.

I’m blindly jealous, suddenly and intensely. He’s so tight with Drew. There’s no way the guy is just a boss. They’re friends, their bond forged by years in the military, by a deep trust that I’ve only ever had with one person.

My mom.

Who handed one of my best friends over to torturers.

An ache inside me threatens to split my body in two, my skin fragile and tissue thin, as if it’ll tear if I even think about anything for too long. The world is full of topics too fraught with emotion. I understand now why people drink to black out, take drugs until they go unconscious, eat themselves to half a ton, watch television for days in a haze.

Every second inside my own head is misery. Getting a break from the never-ending racing thoughts would be nice, and by “nice” I mean heavenly. Living is hard enough.

Living under so much scrutiny, with the self-critical voice inside me amplified by millions of external critics all cranking out their opinions to get attention on social media and in the news makes me wish for an escape.

Pray for connection.

Beg the universe for a break.

“Here’s the biggest question in the Lindsay Bosworth scandal: what, exactly, was Jane Borokov’s role?”

My stomach drops and turns to ice at the same minute. I will my finger to move to the window button, knowing I have seconds before I throw up.

The window doesn’t move. Of course it doesn’t.

They’ve locked me in.

“Borokov is the daughter of longtime executive assistant to Senator Bosworth, Anya Borokov. By all accounts, Lindsay and Jane were friends. Maybe not best friends, but good friends. They ran in the same circles as John, Blaine, Stellan, and Drew Foster. Hung out with Jenna, Tara, and Amanda, who goes by Mandy. Imagine, if you will, a social group made up mostly of the rich children of high achievers. The crème de la crème. And Jane was low man on the totem pole.”

“Unlock my window!” I rasp, feeling the cold dread as it pinpricks through my blood, rising up from my belly through my throat, the acid burning up into the back of my mouth, choking me. This is what they do to you. They talk about you. They talk and talk and provoke and speculate until all the lies and all the truths blend together into a tornado of attention.

The truth doesn’t matter. People aren’t held to account.

All that counts is attention.

I use every ounce of energy left in me as my eyebrows go numb, the force of gagging too much. In the nick of time, the window lowers and a big burst of fresh air hits my face. It’s an antidote, a balm, a quick fix.

Maybe not a cure. But it’s something. And it stops me from emptying that lovely latte all over the side of the SUV.

The wind from the open window obscures the radio, so I can’t hear the lengthy section where the announcer talks about me, but I know what they’re saying.

Jane Borokov has Russian connections.

Jane Borokov allegedly found Lindsay tied up, raped, and beaten five years ago.

Jane Borokov may have been in on the original attack from the beginning.

Jane Borokov was feeding false information to Lindsay while she was in a mental hospital.

Jane Borokov colluded with her mother to bring down Senator Bosworth in an alliance with Nolan Corning.

I know every word they’re saying.

I have to.

It’s not like I’ve had a choice.

And every word of it is wrong. No one believes me.

Especially Silas.

“Close the window,” he says softly. “You’re at risk.”

“And so are you.”

He gives me a nonplussed look.

“At risk of getting a lapful of my mouth.”

FROM. I mean to say “from my mouth,” but the look on his face combined with my own internal horror render me speechless just as the radio announcer says:

“...despite so much evidence showing Borokov had extended contact with the men who harmed Lindsay Bosworth, from Nolan Corning to the three men who did his dirty work, she remains at large, thoroughly investigated but never charged. Her mother, Anya Borokov–”

I close my eyes and start to shake, the wind blowing the tears in the corners of my eyes into the curl of my outer ears. My stomach curdles, the sensation like a hot piece of metal inside, searing me, making my blood warm. All of the regulation in my skin is gone, pieces of me alternating between hot and cold, relaxed and tense, my body a machine that is malfunctioning, firing at will.

And yet I inhale. I exhale. I ignore Silas. I ignore the radio.

Until I can’t.

“...questions remain, though. Jane Borokov claims she is innocent, used as an unwitting tool by the attackers. Five years ago, she says, she was supposed to stay at the party, her departure with friends an accident, her return a simple act of fate. When her mother handed Lindsay Bosworth off to her attackers in broad daylight on the helipad at the Bosworth compound, Jane claims she, too, was kidnapped, forced to act as an errand girl for John, Blaine, and Stellan, unaware that Nolan Corning was the mastermind. She maintains to this day that she never worked with them. While the court of public opinion has virtually tarred and feathered her, with her name one of the most hashtagged worldwide for the last six months, others believe her.”

Silas makes a noise that shows he’s not one of the “others.”

“A member of the intelligence community who agreed to be interviewed for this report on condition of anonymity says that Jane–and possibly her mother, Anya–were set up by Nolan Corning and others. While no one has pieced together a single cohesive story to explain all of the byzantine details, our source says the following is possible.”

Silas leans in slightly, eyes narrowing.

A different man’s voice, clearly from a recording, comes over the car’s speakers.

“No one should take what they see at face value,” the anonymous source says, his voice like sandpaper dragged against the inside of my eyelids, my tongue, my beating heart.

I know that voice.

Oh, God, do I know that voice. The light Irish lilt.

It’s the man who told me how to “help” Lindsay all those years she was stuck on the Island. The man with the light stutter that always made me feel more nervous.

That’s my informant. My source.

And ultimately, he’s the person who betrayed me. I don’t know his name. I’ve never seen his face. Yet I spent four years trusting that he was helping me help Lindsay.

And here I am, paying all the prices for my mistakes.

“Jane Borokov is as much a victim in this web of deceit as Lindsay Bosworth and Drew Foster were.”

Silas sits up. “He called him Drew.”

I just look at him.

“Only people who know him call him Drew. The media use his full name.”

A thousand sharp needles are running fast through my blood. It’s impossible to concentrate on what Silas is saying. The words coming out of the speakers feel like burning coals being poked at me.

“The level of backstabbing, corruption, lies, and scandal in this mess is so much greater than the public could ever imagine. People you think are the villains are innocent, and people the public reveres are tainted. The truth will come out in time. It always does.”

As he listens intently, Silas looks troubled, his throat tightening. He blinks rapidly, then runs a hand through his hair, clearly struggling to control his thoughts.

Or maybe his emotions.

“Our anonymous source paints a wildly different picture of the mother-and-daughter team the Borokovs created. His opinion dissents greatly from the crowd, yet he is not alone.”

I work on breathing, reaching up to touch my hair, finding it crinkled. I frown, then remember in a wave of panic that just twenty minutes ago someone blew up my car. They tried to kill me. I’m a wanted woman.

Wanted dead.

Life happens at whirlwind speed these days. Nothing unfolds in a calm, orderly fashion. It’s all shouts and whispers, screams and taunting, an endless line of provocation and reaction.

I never, ever get time to think. To recharge. To relax.

To exist.

“‘He is not alone,’” I whisper, letting the tears come as fat drops fill until they are impossibly big, so close to breaking I can’t stand it, the pressure of so much salty despair concentrated on my eyeballs like being trapped alive in my own coffin.

As the tears break, the water runs over my cheeks, pouring out.

Silas ignores me. I ignore him. We’re sitting three feet from each other.

This is how people die from shame.

“So many questions remain about the Bosworth affair. Why did Nolan Corning set up such a high-profile, extraordinarily violent scheme to bring down Harwell Bosworth? What were his motives, and why did he use an innocent young woman as the proxy for hurting the senator? How did Gainsborough, Asgarth, and Maisri drug Lindsay and, allegedly, Andrew Foster and get away with it? Why did Lindsay’s best friends from school turn on her in such a public, cold manner? Motive is always the key to solving any mystery, but in this web of deceit, untangling motives is like trying to find the head of a two-headed snake in a Gordian knot. Just when you think you’ve found it, you’re wrong. And it has a deadly bite.”

Silas’s eyes dart sharply to look at me after that last line.

There aren’t enough tears in the world right now to deal with his look.

Shame has a deadly bite, too.

It feels like Silas’s gaze.