Chapter 4

Tuesday December 19

Hailey is dead. Suicide. I don’t understand.

...

I guess I need to get this down before my brain melts.

Ash and I arrived in Las Vegas around noon. We stopped by Hailey’s parents’ house first thing, but nobody was home. We decided to kill time with lunch and then blackjack on Fremont Street. I felt under-dressed.

I left Ash there and went back to Hailey’s house in the early evening. After I rang the bell, a tall middle aged guy with a weathered face stepped out and just sort of stared at me with a scowl on his face. His hair was buzz-cut short enough that I couldn’t really tell what color it was. I didn’t know what to make of his attitude.

“Hi. Is Hailey home? She’s not returning my calls but it’s really important that I talk to her,” I told him.

That, for reasons I didn’t understand yet, set him off. His chest heaved and his nostrils flared. His eyes got psycho. He took a half-step forward into my personal space, forcing me back. Then his body moved violently: he punched the column next to us. It scared the fuck out of me: for a split second I thought he was hitting me. I flinched and stumbled back, falling down the three steps leading up to the doorway. I landed hard on my ass and hit my head on the cement.

“I have never wanted to hit a woman in my life, until now,” he told me, and I believed him. He clearly knew who I was.

My voice was quivering as I responded. “I know Hailey hates me, and she’s got good reason, but please, I need to talk to her. I need to warn her.”

“Hailey’s dead, you exploitative piece of shit!” Hailey’s step-dad shouted at me.

I couldn’t comprehend what he had said. I sat there on my ass bleeding from my head, mute.

“She’s dead because you had to have a sex tape proving that you went through an ‘experimental’ phase in college, before you marry into some country club family and spend the rest of your days dropping off the judge’s kids at lacrosse practice in a minivan!”

He turned his gaze across the street. “What are you looking at?” He yelled, presumably at some neighbor.

A woman came out of the house. After a glance at me she approached her husband and touched him soothingly. “Let me take it from here, okay? Why don’t you go over to JJ’s and have a beer,” she said.

Hailey’s step-father grumbled and wandered back inside. Her mother knelt by me and asked if I was okay. She looked at my head and then she took me inside. She gave me an ice pack and a glass of water. After wiping away the blood she told me that I wouldn’t need stitches.

“Dead?” I finally managed to say.

“Yes,” Hailey’s mom explained. “She did it out in the desert. She attached a hose from the car’s exhaust to the cabin. That was just over a week ago. She didn’t leave a note.”

“That can’t be right,” I stupidly argued. “She was always fun-loving. So upbeat.”

“Hailey was very good at putting on a happy face. She hid her pain. She never wanted to be a bother,” Hailey’s mother said. Her voice cracked as she said it.

I nodded, piecing that explanation together with the Hailey I knew.

I sat there in silence for a while, just trying to process it. Hailey’s mom was patient at first. Finally she said, “I’m sorry, I can’t let you stay. I’ve got people coming over. It’s...” She sighed. “Will you be okay to drive?”

I said yes and left. I probably shouldn’t have driven: I think I have a concussion.

Ash had texted me the name of the hotel he got for us - a fancy place on the Strip. I cried the whole drive there, but managed to keep it together, barely, for the walk through the lobby. Then I spent ten minutes sobbing into Ash’s chest, and after that I curled up into a ball in bed. I yelled at him when he touched my head, trying to comfort me. I apologized. There’s no way he could have predicted that that would upset me - I certainly didn’t. It’s 10:30 PM now. Ash thinks it would be a good idea to get out of the room for a little while so we’re heading to the hotel’s cafe for dinner.

Ash is out gambling, with my blessing. I tried going to sleep, but my mind is too restless. As something to do, I wrote back to Dr. Welsh.

To: Nathan Welsh, Ph.D.

From: Lexi Green

Subject: Re: Disappointed

Hailey killed herself. Yes, she’s the skinny blond girl from the sorority house video. Her step-father blamed it on me, and the video. He wanted to beat the crap out of me, and I don’t think I would have blamed him.

He thinks I made the tape as proof that I “experimented” with girls in college. The truth is worse than that. I used her recklessly in my zeal to expose Chi Omicron. You lost your liberty; she lost her life.

Wednesday December 20

I had gone back to bed by the time Ash got in last night. I tried my best not to wake all the way up when he got in: I knew that I’d never get back to sleep if I did. He spent a suspicious amount of time in the bathroom, so I guessed he was jerking off. He probably assumed - correctly - that I wasn’t going to be in the mood for a while. When he was done I saw him slip a pair of my panties back into the dresser, so I took that as confirmation. It was kinda sweet. Funny how the same action can come across as creepy or endearing depending on who does it.

I need to understand how this happened to Hailey. I also need to figure out how the video got out. Despite my earlier vow, I started reading Hailey’s email diary.

Hailey had been initiated into the Chi Omicron sorority at the end of fall semester, freshman year. The newspaper article exposing the truth behind the “faculty brunches” came out over winter break. By the start of spring semester, the sorority had been suspended and the police investigation had begun.

It had meant so much to her to be a part of the sorority - to have the comfort of what she described as a “pre-built network of friends” - but by spring that was all gone. The sisters never met in groups, and most of them avoided her completely because of her association with me. She moved to a new dorm to get away from me, so she didn’t know anyone there, either. Spring semester, Hailey was completely alone. She failed one of her classes and did poorly in the others.

That summer she met Sam - as in Samantha - in summer school. Their romance was a slow boil if ever there was one. Hailey wrote just about every day for two months analyzing every little thing Sam said, looking for a hint of romantic intention. It should have been obvious, but thanks to me, she was unsure of herself.

Hailey wrote about how their first kiss came about:

Sam had been hinting all through class that she had some sort of surprise planned, but I had to wait until we got to her house to find out what it was. In her bedroom, she made me close my eyes. When she said, “Ta da!” I opened them and she was holding two of those Japanese body pillows - the kind that are as tall as a person and have full-length pictures of sexy anime characters on them.

“Well, what’s it going to be? Asami or Korra?” She asked. Obviously I chose Korra, but once she handed me the pillow I didn’t know what to do.

“Go on - give that girl a good ride,” she said.

“You’re hilarious,” I said and I rolled my eyes. I acted like it was all a joke, but my heart was beating extra hard in my chest.

“Come on,” Sam encouraged me, “look at her face. You know she wants you.” I still didn’t do anything at first, but then she did something with her eyebrows like she was giving me a command. So I put the Korra pillow on the ground, knelt over it, and pretended I was humping it to humor her.

“No, wait,” Sam said. She knelt next to me and pulled on my skirt until it wasn’t under me and there was nothing between the pillow and my panties.

I made a show of humping the pillow and saying, “Oh, Korra!” Still thinking it was just a game. Then a weird thing happened: Sam took off her jeans and got on her pillow too. The way she started moving, she wasn’t joking around. She was grinding against the pillow like she really enjoyed it.

I didn’t know what to make of it. Was she punking me? Trying to set me up for some cruel joke? She must have known that I liked her. But her face was just so innocent. And so beautiful. I couldn’t help but stare, too, at where her crotch met the pillow, the two rubbing each other.

“Like this,” she said and she smiled at me. Oh that smile! This was real! “Tilt forward a little. Okay, now forward and back, not up and down. Just roll your hips.”

I did like she told me. It started as a tingling in my labia, but soon my whole body felt - I don’t know - alive. We just kept doing that and sometimes looking at each other, but her eyes were blinding. She had so much power over me, she could have killed me with a harsh word.

Sam started breathing heavily. Her breaths turned into sighs, and then soft moans. I was so turned on I was worried that I would ruin my pillow with, you know, secretions. Between her sex noises and my own pillow grinding I was staring to feel really wound-up - you know, sexually. The realization hit me out of the blue that Sam and I were going to come in front of each other.

I got self conscious; I couldn’t look at her. But then she took my hand. “Hey,” was all she said. But again, that smile and those eyes - they tore right through me. But in a good way.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off her after that. Her eyes closed and she ground her clit into the pillow harder and then she gasped. She let go of my hand and rose upright on her knees. Her thighs slammed shut on pillow and she pushed it against her with her hands. It was like she was trying to stuff the whole big thing into her cooch. Her body trembled and a couple sounds got caught in her throat.

Then she settled back onto her pillow like normal, giving it a slow back and forth, and she took my hand and put her full attention on me.

I could never, NEVER do this for anyone else! But I desperately wanted to come for Sam. I rubbed myself against the pillow. I closed my eyes and thought about Sam’s lips. The tingle I had been nurturing between my legs had grown into something much bigger and now it was exploding into climax.

I

came

so

hard!

!

!

Once I was finished, Sam joined me on top of the Korra pillow, and she kissed me. It was perfect.