Chapter 3 - Sluts and Rumors

I did not go back to campus for a week. Every morning, I left home with my backpack and told my parents I was going to class, but I spent the day hidden in the farthest corner of the public library instead.

My textbooks stayed closed. Graduation had once been the finish line I counted toward whenever Galeforge became unbearable, but now I couldn't look at a page without remembering the closet and Williams's hands.

At night, I watched the bruises slowly change color.

The first morning I went back, I stood outside the campus gates for almost ten minutes before forcing myself through them. Everything looked painfully normal, but the story waiting for me wasn't.

Fatso Anna had chased Williams Vanderbilt into a closet. She had begged him for sex. She had thrown herself at him.  A photo circulated too. It was blurry, dark, and supposedly me.

It wasn't me. The body was different, and the hair was different, but no one cared enough to notice. They had already made up their minds, and the Vanderbilts had enough influence to make their story believable. What chance did Anastasia Bennett have against them?

I made it through my first class without speaking to anyone, but by lunch, I ran into Dickson outside one of the lecture halls with two of his friends.

He noticed me immediately. “Look who finally decided to come back.”

I tightened my grip on my bag and kept walking, but he called after me.

“Anna, where have you been?”

I turned to face him. After what Williams had told me, hearing Dickson ask that as though he knew nothing made my stomach turn.

“Why do you care?”

His brows pulled together. “I was asking a question.”

“Then answer mine. Did you get what you wanted?”

Dickson stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

“My birthday present.”

Confusion crossed his face. “What birthday present?”

I searched his face, expecting to find something that would betray him, but he only looked genuinely confused. It almost made me question what Williams had told me until I remembered Dickson's words in the lecture hall.

The birthday girl deserves a present.

“Forget it,” I said and walked away.

Dickson called my name again, but I ignored him. Whether his confusion had been real or another cruel game, I wasn't willing to stay long enough to find out.

The next two months brought a different kind of pain. No one needed to touch me anymore. The laughter and whispers were enough, and I learned to keep my head down, avoid the cafeteria and get through each day without drawing attention to myself.

Worst of all was Dickson. Sometimes I caught him watching me across the hallway with a smile, and after what Williams had told me, I could only read it one way.

He knew.

He had to know.

Then I started feeling sick.

The nausea came first, followed by dizziness and a weakness I couldn't explain. One afternoon, I collapsed outside the biology building and woke up in the campus health center.

The nurse ran several tests before sitting across from me.

“You're pregnant.”

I stared at her. The words didn't make sense. They belonged to someone else's life.

She called my parents before she told me she was going to. By the time I got home, they already knew.

My father was waiting in the living room. My mother stood behind him with her arms crossed, her face pale. Aunt Jane was there too. She had stopped by to drop something off, as she often did, and she was the only person in my family who had ever looked at me without making me feel like a disappointment.

The moment I stepped through the door, my father slapped me. The blow knocked my head to the side and sent my glasses flying. I tasted blood.

“You worthless little slut,” he said. “After everything we've done for you, this is how you repay us?”

I tried to speak. “Dad, please. I was—”

He hit me again. “Don't you dare stand there and make excuses.”

My mother said nothing. She only looked at me like I was already gone.

“I was raped.” I forced the words out. “Williams Vanderbilt—he—”

My father's face twisted. “There is no such thing as rape. That's an excuse for girls who can't keep their legs closed. You got what you asked for, and now you want to murder the child to hide your sin?”

“I didn't ask for any of this.”

“You will not abort it.” His voice rose. “You will carry that child and live with what you've done.”

Aunt Jane stepped forward and took my arm. She was small, but she didn't hesitate to stand between me and my father.

“Johnathan, stop it. Look at her. She’s a child. Something happened to her—”

My father turned on her like a storm changing direction. “If you defend that witch, Jane, you are dead to me. Do you hear me? Dead. I will not have either of you under this roof or in this family.”

Aunt Jane did not move. Her fingers tightened on my arm. “Then cut me off,” she said quietly. “But you will not speak to her like that while I’m standing here.”

An ugly laugh escaped his lips.

“Get out. Both of you. I never want to see your faces again. You are no longer my sister. And you—” his eyes found me, full of something colder than hatred—“you are no longer my daughter.”

The door closed behind us with a soft, ordinary click.

Aunt Jane kept an arm around me as we walked to her car. My cheek throbbed, but I barely felt it.

I sat in the passenger seat and stared at my hands.

Nothing felt like mine anymore.