That day it all got raw. If Madison stood next to his friend and played a game of eyes to psyche me out, then I would give it right back to him. I was authentic. I had been a virgin. He had broken my hymen in two places. The OB-GYN would testify to the fact. I was also a good girl, and I knew how to dress and what to say to accentuate that. That night following the grand jury testimony, I called Madison a "motherfucker" in the privacy of my dorm room while I pounded my pillow and bed with my fists. I swore the kind of bloodthirsty revenge no one thought possible coming from a nineteen-year-old coed. While still in court I thanked the jury. I drew on my resources: performing, placating, making my family smile. As I left that courtroom I felt I had put on the best show of my life. It was no longer hand to hand and I had a chance this time.

I went out to sit in the waiting area. Detective Lorenz was there. He wore a black patch over one of his eyes.

"What happened?" I asked. I was horrified.

"We chased a perp and he ran. Hit me in the eye with a mace. How'd you do in there?"

"Okay, I guess."

"Listen," he said. He began to fumble out an apology. He said he was sorry if he hadn't seemed very nice back in May. "You get a lot of rape cases," he said. "Most of them never get this far. I'm pulling for you."

I assured him that he had always been wonderful to me, that the police had all been wonderful. I meant every word of it.

Fifteen years later, when doing research for this book, I would find sentences he had written in the original paperwork.

May 8, 1981: "It is this writer's opinion, after interview of the victim, that this case, as presented by the victim, is not completely factual."

After interviewing Ken Childs later that same day he wrote: "Childs describes their relationship as 'casual.' It is still this writer's opinion that there were extenuating circumstances to this incident, as reported by victim, and [it] is suggested that this case be referred to the inactive file."

But after meeting with Uebelhoer on October 13, 1981: "It should be noted that when this writer first interviewed the victim at approx. 0800 on May 8th 1981, she appeared to be disoriented about the facts of the incident and disconcerted as she kept dozing off. This writer now realizes that the victim had been through a tremendous ordeal with no sleep for approximately 24 hours which would account for her behavior at the time… "

For Lorenz, virgins were not a part of his world. He was skeptical of many things I said. Later, when the serology reports proved that what I had said was not a lie, that I had been a virgin, and that I was telling the truth, he could not respect me enough. I think he felt responsible, somehow. It was, after all, in his world where this hideous thing had happened to me. A world of violent crime.

Maria Flores, from Tess's workshop, fell from a window. That was how the Daily Orange, Syracuse's campus paper, reported it. They used her name and said it was an accident.

As the students filed into the English department conference room for workshop, only one or two of us had seen the item in the paper. I hadn't. Apparently, the paper said Flores, though badly injured in the accident, had miraculously survived. She was in the hospital.

Tess was late. When she came in, the room hushed. She sat down at the head of the table and tried to start class. She was clearly upset.

"Did you hear about Maria?" one of the students asked.

Tess hung her head. "Yes," she said. "It's horrible."

"Is she okay?"

"I just spoke to her," she said. "I'm going to see her at the hospital. It's always so difficult. This poetry business."

We didn't quite understand. What did Maria's accident have to do with poetry?

"It was in the paper," a student volunteered.

Tess looked at him sharply. "They used her name?"

"What is it, Tess?" someone asked.

Our question was answered the following day, when an almost identical article described it as an attempted suicide. The only other difference was that this time the paper left out her name. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together.

Tess had told me it would mean quite a bit to Maria if I went to visit her in the hospital. "That was a powerful poem you wrote," she added, but didn't say what else she knew.

I went. But before I did, Maria made another unsuccessful attempt. She tried to kill herself by cutting an electrical cord near her bed, unfurling the wires inside, and scoring them over and over against her wrists. She'd done this while partially paralyzed on her left side. But a nurse had walked in on her, and now her arms were strapped to the bed.

She was in Grouse Irving Memorial Hospital. A nurse led me into the room. Standing beside Maria's bed were her father and her brothers. I waved to Maria and then shook the men's hands. I said my name and that I was in her poetry class. None of them was very responsive. I attributed this to shock, and to what might have seemed the strange phenomenon of this woman visiting who appeared to have some connection with her that they, her father and brothers, didn't. They left the room.

"Thank you for coming," she said in a whisper. She wanted to hold my hand.

The two of us didn't really know each other, had just shared Tess's class, and, until recently, I had harbored a bit of resentment toward the fact that she'd walked out on my workshop.

"Can you sit?" she asked.

"Yes."

I did.

"It was your poem," she said now. "It brought it all back."

I sat there as she whispered to me her own facts. The man and the boys who had just left the room had raped her for a period of years when she was growing up.

"At a certain point it stopped," she said. "My brothers grew old enough to know what they were doing was wrong."

"Oh, Maria," I said, "I never meant to-"

"Stop. It's good. I need to face it."

"Have you told your mother?"

"She said she didn't want to hear it. She promised she would not tell my father as long as I never mentioned it again. She's not speaking to me."

I looked at all the get-well cards above her bed. She was a resident advisor and all the residents on the hall, as well as her friends, had sent cards. I was struck with what was painfully clear. By jumping but surviving, she was now completely dependent on her family to take care of her. On her father. "Have you told Tess?"

Her face lit up. "Tess has been wonderful."

"I know."

"Your poem said all the things I've been feeling inside for years. All the things I'm so afraid of feeling."

"Is that good?" I asked.

"We'll see," she said and smiled weakly.

Maria would recover from the fall and return to school. For a time she severed relations with her family.

But that day, we joked that she sure had commented on my poem by jumping, and that Tess would have to give her that. Then I talked. I talked because she wanted me to and because here, next to her, I could. I told her about the grand jury and the lineup and about Gail.

"You're so lucky," she said. "I'll never get to do any of that. I want you to go all the way."

We were still holding hands. Every moment in that room was precious to both of us.

I looked up eventually and noticed her father standing in the door. Maria couldn't see him. But she saw my eyes.

He did not leave or advance. He was waiting for me to get up and go. I felt this radiate from where he stood. He didn't know exactly what was going on between us, but there was something he seemed not to trust.

By November 16, the "known pubic hair sample from Gregory Madison" and the "Negroid pubic hair recovered from pubic combings of Alice Sebold, May 1981" had been compared. The lab found that on seventeen points of microscopic comparison, the hairs had matched on all seventeen.