Page 80 of Heat Unwritten
Recording.
"No," I whispered.
I backed away, stumbling over the corner of the rug where Simon had made love to me less than an hour ago. I scrambled for the kitchen, for the shadows, for anywhere out of the line of sight.
But the glass house was a fishbowl. I had designed it to let the light in. Now, it let the eyes in.
I reached the kitchen island, seeking cover behind the marble, when I heard the tires.
It wasn't the smooth purr of the pack’s black SUV. It was the heavy, rattling crunch of a commercial van hitting the gravel of my driveway.
I peeked over the counter.
A white van had pulled up right to the edge of the property line, bypassing the private road gate, which must have been forced open. It was parked sideways, blocking the exit. The side door slid open.
I expected men with cameras. I expected telephoto lenses that looked like sniper rifles.
Instead, I saw a speaker stack.
It was rigged to the roof of the van, pointed directly at the house. Black, ugly boxes wired for amplification.
Crack. Hiss. Pop.
The feedback whined through the air, piercing the walls of the house.
And then, the audio started.
It wasn't music. It wasn't a demand for an interview.
"Please..."
The voice was high, broken, and wet with tears. It cracked in the middle of the word, dissolving into a jagged sob.
"Just let me go! Get off me!"
My blood turned to ice in my veins. The room spun. I gripped the countertop, my fingernails digging into the stone until they threatened to snap.
I knew that voice.
I heard that voice every night in my nightmares. I heard it in the silence between my keystrokes. I heard it every time I looked in a mirror.
It was me.
"I can't... oh god, it hurts... please help me..."
It was the audio from the graduation video. The viral clip. The "Graduation Girl" breakdown.
But it was amplified. It was distorted by the loudspeakers, booming across the cliffside, bouncing off the glass walls of my home. It filled the world. It turned the sky into a mouth that was screaming my own humiliation back at me.
"Look at her! Oh my god, she's leaking!"
The crowd noise swelled in the recording, the laughter, the jeers, the disgust.
My knees hit the floor. I didn't decide to kneel; my legs simply refused to hold me up. I clamped my hands over my ears, pressing hard enough to bruise, trying to physically block out the sound.
But I couldn't block out the vibration. The bass of the speakers rattled the windowpanes.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
