Chapter Four

I raped my best friend.

Mrs. Bowman was true to her word. She never mentioned my Valentine, but she was careful during the remaining weeks of the school year. She made certain that we were never alone together, and she didn’t pat me on the back to applaud my efforts on the basketball court anymore. I could detect no change in attitude from the other teachers. Even Miss Glen, the guidance counselor, didn’t seem to know exactly why she had been called to witness our conference. I think Mrs. Bowman only told her that we had a serious issue to discuss, and that a neutral party might need to intervene.

Mrs. Bowman had been gentle and considerate of my feelings, and logic told me that I could not have expected more from her, but I was an injured adolescent, rejected and sexually frustrated, and I nursed my bitterness. Mrs. Bowman was still the object of my masturbatory daydreams, but now they were more explicit and sadistic. I fantasized about ambushing her after school, waiting in the back seat of her car with a rag soaked in chloroform. (I had no idea where chloroform came from, or how it worked, but in our dreams, all things are possible.) I would drive her car to my secret hideout, where she would become my bound captive, enduring my vile attentions until she learned to crave them. I didn’t do any of those things, of course. I nursed my broken heart in silence, and after a time the pain grew less. I should have learned from it, but I had been in college less than a year before I had another crush.

Madison was my lab partner in chemistry class. Opposites attract, they say. She was outgoing, and I was reclusive. She was pretty and popular. I was a drab pariah. In high school, she had been a cheerleader and a prom queen. Her boy friend was in another college on the far side of the state. She was faithful to him – most of the time.

She attached herself to me because I could help her with her homework. I was too flattered by the attention to care. Our study sessions became the high point of my day, a chance to sit close and inhale her intoxicating scent. She probably thought that I went out with her in the evenings because I hoped to hook up with one of the boys who always flocked around her. In fact, I was restraining the urge to drive them off with a snarl.

One night we went to a fraternity mixer and had too much to drink. I turned down several offers of rides home, and managed to hustle Maddy out the door before she became sick or comatose. I carried her off to my apartment, literally. She leaned against me, singing a parody of the school fight song with obscene lyrics. Once she slithered out of my arms and crumpled to the sidewalk giggling, and it was all I could do to get her back on her feet.

“I guess you better call me a cab,” she mumbled, as I braced her against my doorway and fumbled for my key.

Okay, you’re a cab. I was remembering bad jokes in my confusion. Lust was like a fever in me.

“It’s all right,” I said. “You can stay with me.”

I don’t know how I got her up the stairs. Adrenaline must have been working for me, or lechery. I poured her into my bed.

“You will be more comfortable without these,”