Mom couldn’t even look at me.

It would be Thanksgivings and Christmases at the FaNelli household from here on out. The same fake frosted tree Mom propped against the wall every year, strung with bubble-gum-colored lights and nothing else. The only thing to drink some acidic bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz. I was prepared for this, I was.

I don’t remember the car ride to the Harrisons’. The packing. Checking in at the three-star hotel by the ferry. One of Nell’s pills wiped it all away.

It was well past midnight by the time we pushed open the door to our king-size room. My stomach arched into an impressive back bend, and I found the phone. Woozily dialed room service. “Good evening,” the answering machine taunted. “Room service is available from eight A.M. until eleven P.M. A complimentary breakfast will be served in the—”

“It’s closed.” I tried to slam the handset into the receiver but missed. It crashed to the floor, unflinching and hard as a dead body. “I’m so hungry!” I wailed.

“Okay, kooky.” Nell seemed to move as though she were on wheels. Smooth and graceful and determined. She was on the phone with the front desk, making a dignified request. Then she was ordering grilled cheese, chicken fingers, fries, ice cream sandwiches. I ate it all. I think I was still chewing through a French fry as I dozed off. The sleep was a liquid I kept poking my head out of in the night, gasping for air until Nell’s pill pushed me back under. But I slept. I slept.

I’d gone and messed up my story line in the documentary too. A month or so after I made the decision that I would “regret for the rest of my natural-born life” (that was Mom), I met Aaron and his cameraman in a small sound studio a few avenues east of Rockefeller Center.

I had a new job too. I was now the features director at Glow magazine. It was a big title, but the brand didn’t have nearly the same clout as The Women’s Magazine. It certainly didn’t have the prestige of The New York Times Magazine, which LoLo reminded me we were close to, couldn’t believe I would give up now.

“They’re offering me thirty thousand dollars more.” I showed off the flat plane of my ring finger. “I need it. I owe a lot of people a lot of money. I can’t wait.”

“I’m loathe to lose you,” she finally concluded. “But I understand.” On the day I boxed up my desk, she told me I would be on her masthead again one day. When I teared up, she said, “Remember that article you wrote about how the worst thing you can do to your career is cry in the office?” She winked at me before charging down the hallway, bellowing at the digital director to get her those cover line numbers already.

I thought I would hate going about my day without that fantastic weight on my finger, the way it communicated to everyone to stay away, because all the boxes in my life were checked. I’d be lying if I said a part of me doesn’t miss that emerald’s wicked little glint, but I don’t mind it as much as I thought I would. When a guy asks if he can take me out to dinner, I hope maybe he’s someone who can eventually love me exactly the way I am, as Garret and so many others believed Luke did. Maybe he wouldn’t fear my bite, my kookiness, maybe he’d get past my thorny bristles to see there is sweetness here. Would understand that moving on doesn’t mean never talking about it, never crying about it.

“You remember what to do, right?” Aaron asked.

“Say my name, the age I will be when this comes out, and how old I was at the time of the attack.” I had introduced myself as Ani Harrison the last time I was on camera, the name I was so relieved would be legally mine by the time the documentary aired. I had to film a second take to correct the error, wearing exactly what I’d been wearing on the day we first caught my story in the forever of the camera. Everything would be streamed together, so that it appeared as a single take. No mention of the way my past and present had collided into one another like tectonic plates in an earthquake, producing a fissure that re-formed the course of my life. I couldn’t borrow those clothes from The Women’s Magazine anymore, and they were not cheap to buy.

Aaron gave me a stubby thumbs-up and nodded at his assistant. I saw the gesture as it was really meant to be now—sweet, never smarmy.

Around the time I should have been toasting on a beach on my honeymoon, I’d gotten a call from Aaron that changed everything.

“You were right,” he’d said.

I’d been waiting in a long line for coffee, but I gave up my spot and stepped outside, huddling in an alleyway for privacy.

“I went through the film. You and Dean were both miked up. The camera recorded your conversation.”

I’d pressed the phone closer to my ear and released a long, triumphant breath. It had been good for me to hear Dean use that word. “Rape.” Therapeutic, really. But that wasn’t the only reason I’d asked him to say it. I’ve filmed enough segments for the Today show to know that the camera can pick up almost anything if your mike is on—that bitchy comment about Savannah’s silly pink dress, that nervous pee in the bathroom right before you go on camera. Dean should have known this too, given his current celebrity. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I would do with his admission, but I wanted it just in case I decided to defy Luke and talk about that night. Now that the Harrison name was no longer mine to sully, I’d made my decision. “So we can use it, right? To back up my story?”

“I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t make me excited as a director, because this is a real scoop,” Aaron had said. “But as your friend”—my mouth had shimmied at the word—“it’s an even sweeter get. You deserve for your truth to be told. I just—” his sigh cut him off “—I just want to be sure you’re prepared for the backlash—I imagine people will be pretty outraged.”

The back door of the coffeehouse swung open and an employee tossed a bag of trash into the Dumpster. I waited for him to disappear back into the kitchen. “Of course they will,” I agreed, magnanimous as could be. “It was a terrible thing they did to me.”

“That wasn’t what I—” Aaron stopped when my sarcasm registered. “Right,” he said. Then again, his voice full of understanding and indignation on my behalf, “Right.”

The clapboard snapped at everyone to be quiet, let me speak. Aaron nodded at me: Go. I sat up straighter and said, “I’m TifAni FaNelli. I’m twenty-nine years old, and I was fourteen years old on November twelfth, 2001.”

Aaron said, “Again. Try it with just your name.”

The clapboard sounded one last time.

“I’m TifAni FaNelli.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my parents, for celebrating my weirdness and creativity as a child, even when I did bizarre things like ride my tricycle around the neighborhood in a frilly slip and princess veil and all the neighbors stared. Thank you for encouraging my imagination endlessly, for investing in my education and prioritizing it the way you did, even when it meant making sacrifices in your own life. Thank you for showing me through your own example of hard work and dedication what it means to be ambitious and to have a strong work ethic. I am truly the luckiest girl alive to have you two as parents. I would not be where I am without you.

To my rock-star agent, Alyssa Reuben, at the Paradigm Agency, for keeping after me for years and years to write. And when I finally did, got the book, got TifAni, knew exactly how I could make it better, and did so unbelievably right by me that I still wake up some mornings wondering if this is real life. Thank you for believing in me before I believed in myself.